RANmagazine

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2011-06-28T14:59:00.001+09:00

RAN Magazine Issue 12, June/July </object>

Posted via email from RANdom musings from Nagoya

OKTOBERFEST NAGOYA 2010!

2010-09-30T23:46:00.000+09:00

Oh SCHNAP!! Next RAN×Denis Salmon event is UP! If you missed our FRENCH BBQ this past weekend, you missed a helluva party. It's all good; our German buddies gave us just the reason for the autumn season for one last outdoor event here in Nag-town!!

NAGOYA OKTOBERFEST 2010

17 OF OKTOBER FROM 11:00 to 20:00

LIVE MUSIC – BEER – FOOD

!!! PRIZES !!!

BY RAN MAGAZINE, MANO FATTO, DENIS SALMON

WITH FRANCE JAPON AND NUMBER ONE TRAVEL

LIVE MUSIC BY

TOMO SHAGGER
MICHAEL WADE BAND
BLANKA
GHOST OF MATSUBARA

Access http://ran4.us/nagoyaoktoberfest and RSVP today!!!

Don't Try This At Home (MANGA)

2010-09-18T17:18:00.001+09:00

By Adam Pasion: www.biguglyrobot.net

Teachers Do It on the Net

2010-09-18T14:18:00.000+09:00

| Story and photos by Anthony Gilmore |

Each year, hundreds of people come from the around the world to teach English in Japan. Some do it for the experience, others for the money, and then there are those

who come because they simply want to be teachers. In the fall of 2010, Nameless Media and Productions will do it on the net, exploring the billion-dollar industry of overseas English education with their new “dramedy” web series, English Teachers.

Set in a bustling Japanese city, English Teachers tells the story of Tom Kellerman, a young teacher who left his home in Topeka, Kansas and set out on a soul-searching journey that leads him across the globe to the BeYes! School of English. Making his search more difficult is his rag-tag group of colleagues whose questionable teaching skills seem to be even worse than their social skills. With English being a competitive business, Tom and his BeYes! cohorts struggle to find their way through language barriers, cultural challenges, and the everyday obstacles of being an English teacher.

Anthony Gilmore, the creator/director of the series and president of Nameless Media and Productions, is proud to be bringing this first-of-its-kind story to the booming web series genre. “This is an idea that I’ve had for awhile,” says Gilmore, “But the timing has never been right to move forward with production. After months and months of hard work, we’re finally going to be able see that idea on the screen. There is still a lot of work to be done, but we’re all very excited.”

The production will be brought to life with the help of an international cast and crew. The talented cast of English Teachers is made up of both new and familiar faces from television and film. Jonathan Sherr, who recently starred opposite Mao Inoue in My Darling is a Foreigner, plays the role of Tom. Actress, singer, and model Ananda Jacobs plays the role of Jodi, a fellow teacher and Tom’s potential love interest. Rounding out the cast is Michael Kruse as the aging slacker Mark, Michael Walker as the wanna be ninja Neville, and Gaetano Totaro as the training tornado known simply as Roberto.

With the web series genre quickly becoming a mainstay in popular media, it is an exciting time to be bringing the world of English teachers to the laptop audience. A web series allows the viewer to experience a variety of unique comedy and dramas rarely seen on the sometimes stale television dial. With impressive talent both in front of and behind the camera, the highly anticipated English Teachers production will be just as much fun to make as it will be to watch. “I’ve been able to work with such a great team,” comments Gilmore. “The writing staff have delivered great scripts and have been quite entertaining to work with. The art department is really working hard to make the BeYes! world come to life, and the production manager, producers, and interns are working around the clock to make this show happen. We’ll be shooting on a pair of Canon 5Ds and working with a top- notch local DP, lighting technician, and sound technician.”

English Teachers has posted their first episode at:

www.englishteachersseries.com

So tune in and take notes. There will be a short quiz afterwards.

Nagoya Success Stories: The Sharp Shooter

2010-09-18T13:52:00.002+09:00

| By TD Houchen |

If making a long-standing contribution to a community is the mark of a man, Chris Zarodkeiwicz has plenty of marks. His restaurant/sports bar creation ‘Shooters’, located in Fushimi, smack-dab in the center of Nagoya, was the first of it’s kind in the area, is ‘famous’ by any standard, known by almost every foreigner in the region, and has far surpassed being just a good place to get great food, it’s an establishment, an icon, like Yankee Stadium or Mt. Fuji-it ain’t going anywhere anytime soon.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Chris’s real estate business ‘Interlink’ has helped scores of businesses and ‘regular’ people to find adequate living spaces here in Aichi. Cezars Kitchen, originally an offshoot of Shooters, continues to feed delicious food to thousands of international school children throughout Japan’s international schooling system. Recently, Chris has taken on a stake in the ‘AquaAlpine Hotel’, a posh boutique ski resort hotel located in Hakuba. You might think with all these accolades, Chris Z could be a bit untouchable, one of those frozen business guys with no time, no personality, no love.

Wrong.

Chris dispels the age-old notion that ‘nice guys finish last’ by being a decidedly nice guy, approachable, friendly and successful. He’s a family man, wife and two kids in tow, he’s in great shape, has a disarmingly genuine and some might say ‘goofy’ raucous laugh, and when you get to know him, you can feel his native New Jersey affable characteristics oozing off him, just don’t mention Bon Jovi. He’s down to earth, low key and chill, and takes great pride in his community. He’s the consummate all-around Success Story, but he’s also the kind of guy you’d drink a beer and talk sports with. We did just that and spoke with Chris to find out just what makes him tick...

td: Let’s start with the locally-famous conversation greaser, ‘how long have you been here and why’d you come’?

cz: I’ve been in Japan 16 years. Prior to coming I had always wanted to live and work abroad. I had a friend who was here and worked for a company that owned restaurants and he was in need of staff. I was living in Toronto at the time and hired

5 Canadians to come here and work. Then the same friend told me they were planning to open another restaurant and asked me to come and manage it. The place was called ‘Santa Barbara’ and I ran it for about a year and a half. At the time it was the biggest foreigner establishment in Nagoya with good food, two stories, an outdoor patio, and a great atmosphere.

td: So, you had no ‘plan’ to come to Japan before you came... in other words, you didn’t spend your life dreaming of Japan, you weren’t heavily into anime or Geisha or sushi, the opportunity came and you just went with it....

cz: When I was working in New York for The Hilton Corporation I had requested an international transfer and hoped to be moved to some Spanish-speaking country, Spain, South America, etc. That was my dream. My language skills at the time were not sufficient to get me to any of the Latin countries but I did eventually get transferred to Canada. I think I was looking for something a little more exotic though.

td: So, you’re from Jersey, I’m from Brooklyn, some similarities between the two, did you ever go to Seaside Heights when you lived in Jersey? (Seaside Heights is a sort of sleazy blue collar carnival-cum-amusement park located on the seashore, if you’ve seen the recent super cheesy yet somehow totally entertaining ‘Jersey Shore’ on TV, the show takes place in and around Seaside Heights. Pub. Note)

cz: I loved it as a kid and have taken my kids there a few times on visits back to the states...I’m a Jersey guy through and through.

td: Would you say you’re Nagoya’s Jon Bon Jovi?

cz: (Half joking) Listen, don’t ever say that. It’s actually somewhat annoying. If you want to say anything about my musical tastes related to New Jersey you can mention Bruce Springsteen, okay? Ask anyone in Japan what they know about New Jersey and they mention Bon Jovi. Come on!

td: I should know better. Gomen Nasai. So, you were working in NY at the Hilton, they offered you a transfer to....

cz: Nova Scotia. It was a great experience and I lived in Halifax, but when I was made the offer I didn’t actually know what or where Halifax was. I believe I thought it was in Greenland.

td: So, eventually you make it to Nagoya and..

cz: So I was here for a year or so, managing Santa Barbara and got to know most of the foreign community. I joined the ACCJ, (American Chamber of Commerce Japan/at that time the ABCN)-developed a network of people here and started to put together a business plan. From there I met my partners..

td: What exactly is a ‘partner’? How do you meet your ‘partners’? I need a ‘partner’, how can I find a ‘partner’ Chris?

cz: I really like this part. So I’m standing in Santa Barbara one day and this young guy comes in and says he’s from Nanzan University. He tells me his professor is doing a research paper on how to start a restaurant in Nagoya and I thought ‘wow” that’s exactly what I want to do. So, I get the professor’s information and call him. We both had the same idea regarding a new venture and

I think if you start a business, you have to be totally focused and committed. There is no failure or alternative to making it work. That’s the philosophy I had at the time and I believe that’s what I still believe in. I can’t ever imagine failing. There are a million excuses or reasons out there why a business might fail. I think you just need to have your blinders on if you

discussed becoming partners. This part didn’t really work out, but it got the process started. From there I made a business plan, and started looking for investors. Eventually we split, he opened his own place, and I opened Shooters in Takaoka.

td: So a partner sounds very important to the process, how does a person who wants to start a business find this ‘partner’?

cz: I think it all starts with a business plan or just an idea that you are passionate about. Once you have that then it’s all about asking the right people. Finding people you can trust. In addition, the restaurant I had been working for at the time (Santa Barbara) was busy every day so I had a proven track record and business experience. This definitely helps to find the right people. I currently have two great partners.

td: So tell me this, what exactly did your business plan consist of?

cz:—A good plan includes what the concept is, who your target audience is, how much initial investment is required, how long it will take for you to get a return on your investment, all financial forecasts, size, proposed location, and any other specifics related to the business along with your resume and background information.

td: Did you know Shooters would be successful from the beginning? cz: I was at the old Dragons stadium watching a game with one of my old partners, and we were discussing what kind of restaurant we wanted to get involved in and we came up with the idea of a Sports Bar. It was like a big light went on over our heads. I knew that was the concept. There were no sports bars in Nagoya at the time except one place called “Balls”. They had “Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot” sitting on the bar counter and that was their “sports. Today there are sports bars on every corner. If you go inside it’s usually a coffee shop with baseball on the TV. I had a pretty good feeling it would work.

start thinking like that.

td: What do you think of the climate for business NOW in Nagoya?

cz: Over the last 6 months I think things have definitely improved. Towards the end of

last year it was a pretty challenging time for many businesses in Nagoya. As an entrepreneur I think if you have a great idea it is a good time and place to get something started.

td: Sounds like lots of what you’ve been able to achieve has come from relationships..

cz: Yes, definitely. Nagoya has a reputation for being pretty conservative. I think if you show commitment to living and doing business in Nagoya then the relationships will come that help you achieve your goals.

td: Staying here long term? Definition of success?

cz: Long term... we’ll see?? I love New Jersey. Love the home state of Bon Jovi(joke). I also love Nagoya but when it comes to retiring and thinking long term I like to imagine myself somewhere that’s warm all year.... My most successful moments are when I feel like I’m not chained to my business, when I feel ‘free’, and can choose the things that I want to get involved in. I also think being able to balance work, family and personal is a very big key to really being successful. Personally my greatest success is my two children.

td: If you could be Mayor of Nagoya for a week, what might you change about it? cz: (Drums his fingers on table for an inordinately long amount of time-then-) I like Nagoya. If I could make a few changes I would have more grass in the parks and more benches on the streets. Other than that it’s a great place to raise a family. My kids have gone to good schools, there is a great community spirit in the area and it’s a fantastic place to do business. I like it here. Nagoya’s cool. Not Bon Jovi cool, but cool.

French BBQ in The Park!

2010-09-15T10:42:00.001+09:00

From 12pm to 6pm, RAN MAGAZINE and French Chef Extraordinnaire DENIS SALMON will present delicious FRENCH STYLE BARBEQUE, along with all you can drink, food, music, people, for a 6 hour AFTERNOON DELIGHT.

Time: September 26 2010 · 12:00pm - 7:30pm (Facebook RSVP here)

Location: Shonai Ryokuchi Koen (↓ see MAP below ↓)

- Special Menu -
...Viandes Meat お肉

Carré de Boeuf en papillote et son beurre maitre d'hotel
Rack of Beef in foil and "Maitre d'hotel" butter
牛肉の包み焼きとメートル•ド•テールバター
Piece de boeuf grillé fleur de sel
Beef grilled with fleur de sel
フルールドセル(海塩)とグリルした牛肉
Filet de porc farci aux asperges
Pork tenderloin stuffed with asparagus
アスパラガスを詰めた豚のフィレ肉
Cote de porc aux fruits rouges
Pork Ribs with red berries
赤いフルーツと豚の背肉焼き
Saucisses de Boeuf genepy et poivre noir
Beef Sausage, black pepper & Genepy
黒胡椒とジェネピ入りソーセージ

Entrées Starters

Tzaziki à la française
French fashioned Tzatziki
フランス風ジャジキ
Assortiments de Salades en verrines
Assortment of salads into short cups
グラスに入ったサラダの盛り合わせ
Bagna Cauda et mouillettes campagnardes
Bagna Cauda and rustic bread fingers
バーニャカウダと田舎風トースト

Dessert Dessert デサート

Tartelettes du champsaur et compote fraiche au trois fruits
Linzertorte and fresh three fruits steuw
リンツァートールトゥと3種類のフルーツコンポート

★ フランス語や英語を話す必要はありません。美味しいBB Qを味わいながら楽しい時間を過ごしたい方は大歓迎
★ 3000円（飲み放題・ソフトドリンクのみ）・3500 円（飲み放題）
★ 雨の場合は中止
★ 待ち合わせ：12時から庄内緑地公園駅の2番出口（鶴舞線）。迎えに行きますので着いたらエルベ（080-43 09-4884）までご連絡ください（日本語OK！）。
★ アクセス：http://ow.ly/2wwKW
★ 不明な点、又はキャンセルの場合は気軽にエルベ（080-4309-4884 ）までご連絡ください

<br /><small>View BBQ Party Access in a larger map</small>

Posted via email from RANdom musings from Nagoya

RAN Issue 7: Success Stories

2010-09-14T20:33:00.001+09:00

RAN has hit the street over the weekend-- Got your copy yet? Nope? Fear not, 'cause here's the ONLINE EDITION!!

This month's issue, Nagoya Success Stories. Being a success is difficult in most places, but stepping off the plane in Japan, being a Gaijin Superstar Success takes determination, guts, and plain ol' hard work. This issue, we meet some of Nag's finest to see what they did right, wrong, and what advice they can dish out.

Enjoy!

ACCJ Chubu IBC presents: Web Marketing

2010-09-14T20:11:00.001+09:00

The IBC is the Independent Business Committee for the American Chamber of Commerce Japan (ACCJ) If you own a web business and want to learn of ways of driving traffic to your site or you'd like to meet other local business people, I encourage you to attend.
Time:September 15th 2010 · 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Location: Room #1004 Winc Aichi(Aichi Industry and Labor Center) Nagoya, Japan 愛知県名古屋市中村区名駅4丁目4-38
Created By: Tony Torres, Ray Proper
More Info: Come meet Tony Torres and Mark McBennett for a relaxed discussion
on internet marketing, heavy on the Q&A.
COST: Members 3,000 yen, Guests: 4,000yen
MAP: http://bit.ly/wincaichi

Please be aware that you must pre-register for this event. If you do not register, you are still welcome to attend, but we will not prepare a bento or drinks for you-because we do not know you are coming! If you have not registered yet, please call, email, or fax Noriko Kato at

Tel: +052 229-1525
Fax: +81 52 222-8272
Email: il: <nkato@accj.or.jp>

Simply tell her you intend to come to the IBC event on Wednesday, and she will take your information. Very easy, and it will help us ensure we are prepared for the correct amount of attendees. Registrations will be accepted until 3 tomorrow!

Lucky 7

2010-09-11T04:56:00.001+09:00

The word on the street is "when's the new RAN coming out?" Now.

Get it later today at the usual places, or visit www.ranmagazine.com and read online.

Also come party with us at RADIX tonight! Details can be found wherever you're reading this, just dig a lil bit deeper.

Posted via email from RANdom musings from Nagoya

Kansai <-> Kanto for ¥5000?!

2010-09-09T14:52:00.000+09:00

courtesy GAIJINPOT

A low-cost carrier to be set up by All Nippon Airways at the end of this year may charge only around 5,000 yen to fly between Kansai airport in Osaka and Narita airport east of Tokyo. The new airline, which will start operations in the fall of 2011 under a brand other than ANA, may also offer Kansai-Fukuoka and Kansai-Naha services for roughly 5,000 yen and 8,000 yen.

The prospective 5,000 yen airfare between Kansai and Narita compares with the 14,050 yen charged by JR Tokai for the Nozomi shinkansen service between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka, as the airline aims to win customers away from railway and bus operators.

The new firm will also offer deep discounts on airfares for international flights — mainly those to Asian countries from Kansai — as it intends to take on competition from foreign budget airlines as well amid an increase in the number of landing slots at Haneda and Narita airports.

While the new company’s domestic services, which will also include the Kansai-Hokkaido route, are expected to start in the fall of 2011, its international services will come later, however.

Read the rest of the article over at GAIJINPOT

SISOSIG: YardWork

2010-09-09T14:03:00.001+09:00

By J.L. Gatewood

Greetings fellow Also-RANs. I'll save the lengthy introduction; you should know me by now, or at least have read that one "Gaijin Superstar" volume of this tome, issue 4 if you need to refer back to it. In that one, I introduced myself as the staffer here who actually came under his own volition, with out the aid of psychedelic drugs, extortion, or other dark influences, to JapanLand. I started this journey physically in 2001, but really before that as a teen in 1991 growing up in the Nikkei infested sprawl that is Los Angeles.

I'm penning this edition of SISSIG "Yardwork" because some of us need to maintain our lawns, our mental greenery. Specifically, living here in Japan for certain lengths of time causes us to want to peer over our psychological fences and stare at our neighbor's seemingly lush gardens. Stare at their seemingly soft, carpet like turf, and HATE. Don't be decieved though. The grass is not as green over there as you think...

Since being in and outta Japan for 10 years, people have started regarding me as some sort of "Life In Japan SAGE" or something to that effect. Don't be fooled though; I have been known to go days on end absolutely HATING this place. Any mention of conversation about medical care, government, taxes (and payment thereof), grocery shopping, traveling during Golden, Silver, and New Years week, or buying a plane ticket back to the States-- has the same mental effect on me as if Freddy Kruger scratched his hand-knives across a chalkboard a mere 2cm away from my ears... やだ。Guess what y'all, I'M HUMAN TOO! I get tired of being in a different environment...even though I CHOSE to be here under my own volition. The key here though is, I don't go raining on someone else's parade about it every 5 seconds.

Some of y'all out there are fed up with Japan for various reasons... That's good. Healthy too. Maybe it's time for you to move on to something new. But God gave me two ears for a reason... I heard ya TWICE the first time, ya dig? So please spare me the re-run and don't keep spouting the same "GTFO Japan" spiel to me everytime you see me in Kanayama, in Sakae, and Mei-eki. Maybe I like it here man... Maybe I can put up with JapanLand's ideosyncrasies more than you... Maybe I like those things that you hate...

As for me being a sage on AllThingsJapan... Well, no. I don't pretend to even come close to that moniker; anyday you'll find me asking for advice from someone as well. I can only tell you what works for me. Everyday is a struggle, but for the sadist in me, this is why I love my experience here. Because its hard work. Not everyone can do this. Not everyone is able to pick a life up and set it down in a totally foreign spot on Earth and make like its the same thang, different longitude. Then again, not everyone can be an astronaut, basketballer, or hip-hop superstar. Just like drinking, you should know when you've had enough and just say no.

It's not giving up, or giving in; its moving on and finally letting your lawn grow the way its supposed to grow. As for me-- Well like my homie Adam P said in this same column in issue 4-- "נρη 4 ℓуƒє вιт¢нєѕ!"
When I've had my fill of this joint, I'll save you the drama, and just push away from the bar, take my ball, and go home.

When In Rome: Opposite Attracts

2010-09-09T13:52:00.001+09:00

By TD Houchen

From the inception of this column, I’ve intended to offer

whatever bits of wisdom I might have accumulated over the course of my almost 7 years living on planet Japan, in the hopes that you don’t make the same mistakes I’ve made, or something like that. It’s supposed to be a sort of advice column given in the form of social commentary, Japan-style. I’ve discussed primarily Japan-esque topics such as tatemae- honne and isshin denshin, and I’ve gotten myself in deep dookie after having dished out and perpetuated stereotypes of both Japanese women as well as us nutty foreign dudes, essentially, I’ve been trying to make your stay here a bit less irritating, while trying to be vaguely entertaining, though I’m not sure what success I might have had. It’s still pretty irritating for me here, despite my best efforts, however, I do think I’ve had marginal success making my life slightly more entertaining, yours too I hope.

Maybe I’m irritating to me, I’m trying to suss it.

In this installment of WIR, I’d like to flip the script and offer up the advice to do your own thing at all cost, instead of trying to do as the Romans are doing. Sure, I’m going out on a limb here, telling you to buck whatever trend you see being forced upon you in favor of following your own pied piper, even if he leads to disaster, but that’s exactly what I’m telling you to do and here’s why.

It’s a spiritual thing. See, once you’ve latched your boat to the next guy’s, you’ve also tied yourself to his karma, be it good bad or indifferent. Remember when you were a kid and somebody might take the Lord’s name in vain and you’d move a few feet away from that person, hoping that the coming lightning bolt didn’t accidentally scorch you while it torched your friend? Yeah, so, Karma is a bit like that, in that, if you’re following the next guy, or the next guy’s trends, you’ve increased the likelihood that you’ll reap what he has sown. You don’t want to do this. Unless you’ve got no ideas or mind of your own, which, as an avid and faithful reader of RAN, I’m sure you do.

You need to carve the path, instead of just walking on it. You need to give those ideas that are swirling around your dome sustenance and feed your imagination. It causes you to

become like a sort of positive energy vibrational magnet, who doesn’t want to be a positive energy vibrational magnet? You’d do yourself a huge favor by becoming a PEVM, you could do much worse.

Doing your own thing sets you up as an attractor of energy for which your projects can survive, and thrive. Playing follow the leader allows you to only see the guy directly in front of you, and chances are, there are several guys in front of the guy in front of you, when do you ever see The Front?

You don’t.

There’s that song about New York, Frankie sang, “..if I can make it there/I’ll make it anywhere..”, make it wherever you already are. Hell, think it’s easy making it in a country as homogenous and notoriously resistant to change and difference than Japan? No way man.

If you’re able to strap up your boots here and carve your path, create your identity, and thrive as a missionary of independent thinking in a land where independent thinking has been all but banned, you’ve earned your stripes and given yourself the green light to succeed almost anywhere.

We support you here at RAN. This piece is not a shameless plug or self-promotion, it’s a write-up letting you know you’ve got a friend, a potential business ally, a partner, a ready- made-support-staff here at RAN magazine. Our creed is that we’re here as a bunch of people who want to bend the world to our path, not the other way around. We’ve all got ideas and dreams and RAN is the physical manifestation of lots of those dreams.

If we can do it, so can you. I’m no military brat, however that axiom Be All That You Can Be repeats itself in my mind on a daily basis.

While everyone else is going around complaining about the lack of whatever there is or isn’t to do, you be the one to do it. Plan that event, open that business, shoot that movie, build that school, there is no time like the present.

Therefore, as my man Vinnie Vintage implores, do

you/’cause I’ma do me…..

Be All That You Can Be.

Right About Now…

Green Spot: Still Waters Run Deep

2010-09-09T13:34:00.000+09:00

Water, the most abundant substance on the planet, but also the most misunderstood when it comes to drinking it. I think we all know that drinking water is good for us. We hear it from health experts every day. But just how important is water for us to have a healthy life? With the sweltering Nagoya summer approaching quicker than a herd of salarymen descending on a nomihodai, it's becoming more and more important to keep your body hydrated. So let's take a closer look at the big H2O. When you were a kid in school, you learned that each molecule of water is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom - hence H2O. You may also have learned that it was great fun to fill up your squirt guns with water and unload it at your unsuspecting friends and school mates, at least until the principal caught you. What you may not have learned, however, was how much water you need to drink in order to stay healthy. Your body is roughly around 60-70 percent water. Blood is mostly water, and your muscles, lungs, and brain all contain lots of water. So it should come as no surprise that we need lots of water everyday in order to function properly. The body needs water for regulating body temperature, to provide the means for nutrients to travel to all your vital organs. It also transports oxygen to your cells in order to replenish them, remove waste (which will get dumped in your organs and tissues if you don't get enough water to flush all that stuff out), and protect your joints and organs from disease.

Every day we lose about 2-3 quarts (12 cups) of water through perspiration, urination, breathing, through pores (especially the soles of your feet), and in the cleaning processes the body goes through regularly. If you do any kinds of sports of physical exercise, it's even more. The best way to replenish the lost water content is to drink more water, of course (as if you didn't know that already).... But drinking water not only replenishes your lost supply of water; it also has many other health benefits:

Weight loss - Not only does it replace high-calorie drinks like soda and juices, it is also a great appetite suppressant. Water has no fat, no calories, no carbs, no sugar....It's just water, and that's a good thing. *Healthy for your heart - Drinking lots of water significantly lowers your risk of heart disease and heart attacks. If you drink more than 5 glasses a day, you are 41% less likely to die from a heart attack, according to a six year study in the American Journal of Epidemology.
Energy - If you're dehydrated, your energy levels drop faster than a virgin's morals on prom night. Even mild dehydration (as little as 1-2 percent of your body weight) can lead to fatigue, muscle weakness and dizziness. Don't wait till you're thirsty since it's already too late at that point. Keep your body hydrated throughout the day to have a steady supply of energy.
Other benefits include: Cure for certain kinds of headaches (a symptom of dehydration), healthy skin, good digestive health, cleansing of the body, greatly reduced risk of colon cancer, and better athletic performance (fellas, I'm not just talking about going to the gym here...)

So, how much water should you drink? Well, let's just say that by the time you feel thirsty, you're already dehydrated. So instead of sticking to the old: "drink 8-10 glasses of water per day" mantra, I will simply say try to keep yourself from getting thirsty in the first place. NO...PUT THAT DOWN....don't even think about it! I saw you salivating over that Triple Vitamin and Mineral Enhanced Strawberry, Citrus, and Kiwi flavored water (bottle) from the top shelf of a combini cooler. Popular culture would have you believe that carrying a water bottle with you and taking little haphazard swags from it looks cool, chic, in, hip or whatever adjective you want to use. Hell, in Japan some people even have cute little coats for their plastic bottles, but I know that by now you know better than to buy plastic bottles. Not only is the plastic quite bad for the environment, but the water out of a plastic bottle actually has more impurities than tap water. Think about it: tap water has movement, whereas bottled water sits idly in the same plastic bottle for weeks, or perhaps even months at a time. Also, tap water is highly regulated and quite frequently checked (don't know for sure about Japan, but it's 100 times a month minimum in the U.S) for E. coli and other bacteria. The same rules don't apply for bottled water, which is only required to be tested once a week at the most. Bottled water companies don't have to list the source, or purification methods used on the bottle,so you really don't know what you're drinking...

A little test I did last year really opened my eyes, when it revealed that there were roughly 3-5 times as many impurities in Evian bottled water, than in regular unfiltered tap water. And not to forget the chemical leech of plastic bottles, which we talked about in the Green Spot in a previous issue.... Of course, not using so many plastic bottles is tremendously beneficial for the environment as well, as less bottles need to be produced, packaged, filled, shipped, and eventually end up on landfills, or in the incinerators. So, the best thing you can do for your body, your health, and the earth is to buy a good (read, not the cheapest one) filter for your tap, and a good (preferably not plastic) reusable bottle and take your water with you when you leave the house in the morning. It's safer to drink (once filtered for metal residue from the pipes, and other impurities), costs less in the end, is better for the environment, and certainly beneficial for our bodies. It doesn't matter what your'e interested in in this life, because it's not going to happen if you can't breathe the air or drink clean water. Do something about the state of the environment now, because it comes down to you... yes, YOU. You are alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of mankind. Make your stand and protect the natural resources we have available. Do your part and inspire others to conserve rather than deplete, to make little changes in their lives that, even though seemingly insignificant, can have a huge impact for everyone.

For more information about water, head over to the following website and beprepared for some truly shocking insights:

http://imparo.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/tap-water-vs-bottled-water-and-the-environment/

Nagoya's 20 Best Lunch Deals (courtesy NagoYahoo.com)

2010-09-09T02:54:00.001+09:00

If you go for lunch in Subway or Starbucks you're probably going to end up paying close to 1000yen, so why not try a lunch time deal at some of Nagoya's top restaurants? Here are 20 of the best.

Japanese
Utage Tempura

Cost: 1580yen Location: Midland Square, 4F
Tendon (tempura on rice) with miso soup and a small dessert. Oishii-soo!
website

Uoki Sushi

Cost: 180-360 per plate. Location: JR Nagoya Station, at theSouth Exit.
Good quality, low price sushi- and they have an English menu to help you. You might need to order most of your food from the chefs, since the best stuff is not on the conveyer belt. It may not be the best sushi you will ever find, but the location and price is very convenient.
052-587-2278

Nigiri No Tokube

Cost: 180-360 per plate. Location: Oasis 21, in Sakae.
You can walk there from the underground shopping mall. They offer all kinds of sushi, and also do tempura. You can even have tempura sushi. Again, this is not a place for sushi connoisseurs, but it has a great location and will really suit most foreigners and tourists.
052-963-6656
website

Italian
Salvatore Cuomo- The Kitchen

Cost: 2800yen Location: Nagoya station, 12F
If you go at lunchtime you can get a delicious and very filling Italian lunch. It includes a large buffet of starters (with meatballs, pasta, salad) a main dish (pizza or pasta) a very good desserts buffet, and coffee.
052-564-0065
You will also find Salavtore Cuomo pizzerias in Nagoya. Their lunch buffet costs just 1000yen, but is nowhere near as good as the flagship restaurant.
website

Vicino

Cost: 1700yen for 3 course lunch with coffee. 3000yen for 4 course lunch
Vicino is a popular Italian restaurant in Kakuozan. The menu changes every day.
052-762-3986
website

De Cesari

Cost: 1200yen Location: Osu shopping arcade, South Street.
052-762-3986
This is the place to go after some shopping in the Osu arcade. Very nice stone baked pizza.
website

French
Le Martin Pecheur

Cost: 3500yen (for 3 course meal with coffee) Location: Near Fukiage station.
Martin Pecheur has long been regarded as one of Nagoya's best French restaurants. 3,500yen is not cheap, but it is worth it if you like fine food.
map

Chez Toto (052-265-2002)

Cost: 900yen Location:Shinsakae- machi
This bistro was originally run by a Frenchman, and is located about 5 mins walk South of Shinsakae-machi station. They still serve up traditional style French food at great prices. The lunch deal for 900yen includes a main course, bread and coffee. For 300 extra you can get a nice dessert. Highly recommended.
website

Creperie Breizh (052-569-1185)

Cost: 500-1500yen per crepe. Location: Nagoya Station
This creperie is located on the 13th floor of Nagoya station but there is nothing unlucky about it. Just about every kind of crepe and galette you could think of, all cooked in the traditional Bretagne way. The crepes range in price from 500-1500yen, which is pretty good value, but the drinks are a bit more expensive. You can eat your meal on the open air terrace, which has a great view of the city.

L Auberge De I'Ill

Cost: 2,940yen-10,000yen. Location: Midland Square tower.
If you want to dine in luxury, this is the place.
The original L'Auberge restaurant in France has maintained the '3 Michelin star' rating for over 30 years. The Nagoya branch is located on the 42nd floor of Midland Square, with a superb view. It's a high class place, even at lunch, so it's best to make a reservation and dress accordingly. The cheapest lunch set costs 2,940 (which is a lot cheaper than the evening meals).
website

Le Table- Joel Robuchon

Cost: 2,800-5,000yen Location: Sakae
Joel Robuchon is a world renowned chef- he has restaurants in Tokyo, Las Vegas and Macau with the coveted '3 Michelen Stars' award.
The Nagoya branch is at the top of Matszakaya department store in South Sakae. The food is delicious and expertly prepared. It is not all that filling, but it just about feels right for a nice lunch.
There's a Maitre d' looking over proceedings in the restaurant, so don't turn up looking too scruffy- or he might turn you away!
website

Paul Bocuse (052-563-4455)

Cost: 1800yen. Location: Nagoya Station bdg, 12F.
For around 1800yen you get a three course meal with as much bread as you like. You can pay extra if you want steak. Very tasty, nicely prepared and a convenient location.
website

Asian
Shanghai Classical Kitchen

Cost: 1680yen Location: Midland Square
Located on the 4th floor of Midland sqaure, Shanghai Classical Kitchen is a good mid-range chinese restaurant. The above picture shows the lunch food.
website

Sawasdee Sumiyoshi

Cost: 900yen Location: Sakae and Tsurumai.
2 restaurants, offering delicious Thai dishes at really good prices. The lunch deal includes either Phad Thai, Thai curry or Thai rice, plus salad, a small soup and unlimited soft drinks. Very nice!
One branch is in Sakae, and one is at Tsurumai (also has a massage center). They are open from 11:30am- 11:00pm.
website

Dynasty

Cost: 3500-5000yen. Location: 1F Hilton Hotel Nagoya, Fushimi
Luxurious and wonderfully decorated Chinese restaurant.
052-212-1111

American
Wolfgang Puck (052-957-5756)

Cost: 1200yen for soup, main course and unlmited drinks. Dessert is 400 extra.
Location: Sakae
Wolfgang Puck is the official chef of the Academy Awards. He might not be there in person, but that doesn't stop them from serving up the best American food in Nagoya.
I had soup, a small roast chicken and then Mississippi mud pie. Another time I had a pure beef cheeseburger followed by white chocoloate cheesecake. It is top quality american food, although you need to watch those calories! The attentive waiters bring you as much soda, ice tea or coffee as you want.
Located on the 10th floor of the Aichi Arts Center, in Sakae, right next to Oasis 21.
It's open from 11:00-23:00 everyday except Mondays and National Holidays (when the whole arts center is closed)
website

Hard Rock Cafe

Cost: 1200yen Location: Fushimi
The famous rockin' restaurant serves up various types of American food. You're sure to get a tasty (and big) burger or steak here. The bill mounts up quite fast, especially if you drink alcohol.
However, you can eat cheap here before 4pm. A Cheeseburger or steak costs 1200yen, with as many soft drinks as you like.
In Fushimi
Website

Healthy
Innuniq (Organic food)

'Every day is Earth Day' according to the menu. Inuuniq is the cure for people who can't stand MacDonalds and Mos Burger. It only serves freshly prepared, organic food. There are one or two meat dishes, but it is mainly vegetables on offer here, making this a great place for vegetarians. Chilled out guitar music and a leafy, green garden add to the feeling that you have escaped the world of concrete and convenience stores- if only for an hour.
Situated just South of Kurokawa station. check map
052-916-5390
website

Hanakoju

Cost: 2000yen (for full lunch and dessert)
Location: Just South of Takabata station. (Last stop on yellow subway line)
Nagoya's longest running vegetarian eatery. Very nice choice for vegetarians.
052-353-6970
website

Indian
Akbar

Cost: 850-1600yen depending on how much you want
One of Nagoya's most popular and authentic Indian restaurants.
There are 2 outlets:
Sakae. On Hirokuji Dori, just along from Maruzen. 052-261-0986
Nagoya station area. It is in the basement of Castle Plaza, which is on Sakura Dori.052-583-0986

On Nagoyahoo you can post your own articles and tips about shops, bars, restaurants, tourist attractions, events and clubs.

B.I.O. presents "The Art Of War" Live debut

2010-09-09T02:12:00.001+09:00

Time	Saturday at 9:00pm - Sunday at 6:00am

Location	Radix, Nagoya (map and venue site: http://ran4.us/duDSoN)

Facebook Event Page:	http://ran4.us/9Rg77U

More Info	Join the future. This September 11th. B.I.O. presents "The Art Of War" in their first live performance at the dance club RADIX in Nagoya near Tsurumai station. Guest Live: The Art Of War, Lady-M, Dacro Bass, and TheOne20. The entire unforgettable night of sound will be done with live MCing from Dacro Bass. Also, let's not forget the lineup of amazing mixes from the DJs-- Radix and Replicante's own dsk, Akira, Kenzi, Aketo, Zip FM's Yoshida3, Roco, and last but not least, Stereophonic's Nick Edges. Not to mention, there will also be an extremely well-known mystery DJ to grace the stage. Imagine yourself attending. Now, imagine yourself making it a reality. Join the future. The choice is yours. ◆9月11日（土）9PM-6AM ◆予約:2000円 / 当日:2500円ドリンク代別【600円】 Club Info: http://www.radix.to/ Tickets: biopresale@gmail.com <Guest Live> THE ART OF WAR [B.I.O.] http://www.myspace.com/taowmusic DACROBASS http://www.myspace.com/dacrobass LADY-M http://www9.ocn.ne.jp/~ladym/ http://www.myspace.com/ladymforya THEONE20 http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-One20/345579513002 http://www.youtube.com/user/theone20nagoya <Guest DJ> -!!?? Mystery Guest ??!!- <DJ's> YOSHIDA3[Dreamwave/ ZIPFM] NICK EDGES [Stereophonic] DSK [Re:plicante] AKIRA SAOTOME [B.I.O.] ROCO KENJI

Our website is a-changin'

2010-09-07T16:01:00.000+09:00

We've been around now for over a year-- and in that time, we've grown tremendously in terms of readers, and of course the way we disseminate the information that makes up RANmagazine. Trevor, our esteemed publisher, and I get into lots of discussions about how I think magazines and most other general periodicals will die a slow death, while he believes magazines will be around for years and years. One thing we do agree on though-- RANmagazine, the printed version feels like butter when you thumb through it.

See, we have a crack team of illustrators, layout designers, photographers that make up our team... Not to mention a damn good printer that ensures the finest paper and best ink we can afford will make every issue look like a collector's edition. Have you ever gone over someones house who is a true bibliophile? You know, that person that's probably a member of Oprah's book club, and has every issue of Omni, GQ, and National Geographic in a special bookshelf in the den? They don't even call it a den-- it's The Reading Room... I do-- my uncle Randy. And he looked at RAN and was impressed. But wait-- I thought we were talking about RAN's website, right?

My task, is to create a website worthy of being every bit as good as the printed magazine. Becoming the place that promotes and also creates. RAN is about building community and knocking down barriers. Informing and proclaiming. The website is a far-reaching missionary of this doctrine. Hence-- today I am totally revamping the website to do just that.

Since the magazine is broken into sections and departments, it makes sense to do that here. Just like we have sections that mirror the body's 5 senses-- See, Listen, Taste, and so forth, we're placing our stories here right on the front page, just like that.

The site is fully mobile capable-- Just go to m.ranmagazine.com -- or scan the QRcode on the front cover of the magazine with your keitai. If you have an iDevice (iPhone, iPod, et al) or Android Phone (samsung epic, Sony X10, etc) then just visit www.ranmagazine.com like normal... The site will auto load an optimized webapp just for you.

This also goes for our Online Editions of RAN. In the right-hand column, you can see every issue of RAN, ready to be read. Plus if you have an iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle, or whatever-- you can download them into your device-- all without connecting your device to your PC. So you're never far away from the latest issue of The Voice of Nagoya.

Our internet community is spread out across a lot of different mediums; we have 400+ fans on Facebook, and over 50 people and other news outlets are following us on Twitter. Sometimes we'll plan an event or cover a story, and the conversation gets all jumbled up. So beginning yesterday, I installed some tools and enhanced the ones we already had, all in the name of tying things together. If you notice the top and bottom of your web browser when you load the page (Only the latest versions of IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari) there are now toolbars that give you complete access to the entire site's navigation, sharing and posting tools, and also instant messaging and video chatting functionality.

After doing research on our site analytics, we find most people visiting the site usually come here after seeing a story shared on Facebook, or tweeted through Twitter. This means most people are already using these social networking sites when they land on RANmagazine.com. Our site will now automatically know this and log you into our site using those identities. No more having to remember yet another login and password...

The site IM and video chat are both connected as well--Feel free to play around with it for now-- but we have some events planned that will use this space to host "town meetings" and take Nagoya's pulse. It was always our goal to make RANmagazine.com something akin to a street corner where everyone checks in, sees what's going on in the area today, chats a bit about what's current, then goes and does their thing... So with this in mind, welcome to the new RANmagazine.com!

Let me know what you think, as always-- Comment below!! Go somewhat easy though-- We're still finalizing some things here and there... Also if something isn't working properly please let me know so I can look into it!!

Thanx,
J L Gatewood
Chief Editor and Web Monkey
RANmagazine

Nagoya Live Houses

2010-08-12T23:15:00.002+09:00

BY IAIN MALONEYCOURTESY: GAIJINPOT.COM

Jonny playing at Looop.

For too many people, Nagoya is simply a station between Tokyo and Kyoto, offering little of interest. In addition to the tourist attractions I have written about elsewhere on this site, Nagoya also has a thriving music scene, some characterful live houses and some truly magnificent local bands.
Ignored by the insular scenes in Tokyo and Osaka, Nagoya bands have been given space and time to develop along their own lines and the rewards are starting to be reaped. Long time features of the live house circuit like Karesi, Jonny and Soul Kids are starting to make waves outside their own pond, with frequent radio play, press recognition and an increasingly national profile. Jonny even managed to get airplay in the UK on BBC radio.
Nagoya is filled with music venues, from the big to the small, the polished to the skuzzy. While halls like Zepp and Club Quattro attract the larger national and international bands, it’s in the hard-to-find sticky-floored clubs that the Nagoya scene struts its stuff. Highest profile of these must be Tokuzo in Imaike.
Attracting the big names of the non-mainstream world (Tenniscoats, Acid Mothers Temple) as well as many more leftfield foreign bands (epic45, Joanna Newsom), Tokuzo is a fantastic performance space with great acoustics, a sizeable stage and decently priced drinks. My only gripe is their preference for cabaret style seating regardless of the style of band playing. Perfect for jazz, but watching a band like 6 Eyes perform sleazy David Lynch inspired rock n roll while sitting behind a table is not entering into the spirit of things.
Also in Imaike is Huck Finn. A true basement dive with a stage at one end, a counter at the other selling cans of beer and little but flyers and ashtrays in between. Huck Finn doesn’t have much draw for big names but is popular with newborn bands and hosts many cheap showcases, perfect for those who like to say “of course, I saw them before anyone”. Club Rock n Roll in Shin-Sakae is where the party’s at. A Nagoya institution: sizeable mosh pit, one tiny toilet and some of the weirdest, loudest and downright nastiest bands you’ll ever see.
Sometimes I’ve been blown away, sometimes just confused, but I have always been entertained by the chaos in Club Rock n Roll. KD Japon in Tsurumai can only call itself a venue because bands play there. No stage, just a space in front of the bar, the audience squash backs against the bar or huddle on the rickety mezzanine level praying the whole thing doesn’t collapse. If you want to use the toilet you have to cross the ‘stage’. Needless to say it’s a terrific place to see bands. All pretence at separation between performers and audience is lost and if the band are great then the energy in the room is amazing.
On the other hand, if they’re nothing special it becomes obvious very quickly. Every sigh can be heard by the band, every roll of the eyes noticed. There are other clubs – Upset, Plastic Factory and so on – but these four between them form the hub of Nagoya’s indie/rock/punk scenes and have something of interest on offer almost every night. The trick is finding the diamonds in the rough. All too often bands have to rely on word of mouth here, with little in the way of decent local radio or music press.
Luckily the bands here are friendly and chatty and are eager to recommend other bands to anyone who shows an interest. All these venues have decent websites with full schedules and maps. Also magazines like Indies Issue have gig listings for small and mid-level Japanese indie bands.

This article originally appeared on GaijinPot.com, on 8/12/2010

2010 World Cosplay Summit hits Nagoya!

2010-08-01T14:49:00.001+09:00

This weekend, the biggest event for lovers of anime and manga hits Nagoya, the 2010 World Cosplay Summit, sponsored by TV Aichi.

The "World Cosplay Summit" was created to promote international exchange through the Japanese youth culture of manga and anime.
The free and dynamic nature of manga was instrumental in the birth of cosplay. Nowadays youth from around the world find this as a common language and a dynamic new form of global interaction. The World Cosplay Summit began in Osu, Nagoya and has grown to include 15 countries from around the world. If you count audience and participants at each preliminary event, the number of people involved is now in the 100s of thousands.
For youth who have discovered Japan through manga and experienced Japanese culture through the medium of the World Cosplay Summit, we endeavor to continue the development of this new form of international exchange.

Expect a full write up in RANmagazine next issue, but we've got pix and vid right here for you, including some liveblogging on RANtv's Ustream channel! Check the goods below...

OH SCHNAP!!! SCRIBD just featured RAN!

2010-07-28T02:43:00.001+09:00

Scribd (www.scribd.com) is a great place for storing published works that you want the world to see at minimal cost over the internet (in other words, its a FREE place I can stick RANmagazine issues, and embed them into www.ranmagazine.com, our Facebook account and twitter...) Of course there's LOTS of other folks doing this too-- Duke University, The County of Los Angeles, Microsoft, Ford Motors... It's a HUGE aggregate of written material, I happened upon while working my former job back in the States--we used it to publish our tech manuals for different systems.

With all the content there, they've built communities around them, and you can subscribe to any sets of publications that come via Scribd. If you choose to, you can subscribe to RAN and have it be delivered via email.

Today though, I was looking through the analytics for our site and noticed a serious SPIKE in traffic...

Normally, we get around 10-15 reads per day... But all of a sudden, we started trending UP on July 22nd.... And that's just site reads... There's the option to DOWNLOAD the magazine to your PC, or even iPhone, iPad, or other mobile. Take a look at this...

We got over 120 downloads a few days ago... Why??? What happened? Well we did have a little erotic photography in this issue... But nothin' major... Maybe they were enthralled by my Japan Beaches piece on page 22.... But then I checked my email to find this...

We got FEATURED on their front page! So we have people from all over the world looking at RAN and Nagoya right now... Check this out--

THREE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED EIGHT individual reads on Issue 6... Honestly, thats well above what we actually printed...

Folks, the future has arrived; When a print magazine's competing with the likes of YouTube and gains readership via Facebook and Mixi, and has loyal readers from places like Sweden, Kenya, and even a few pings in Saudi Arabia, you know its a different world... You can read our magazine in print... But you can also get it in ANY digital format you like, for the nice price of FREE.

Got a shiny iPad or new iPhone 4 or one of the latest 'Droid sets? well you DEFINITELY need to be taking RAN on the go--

Just access the Issues page at www.ranmagazine.com from your mobile and navigate to the issue you want. Then download it and there you go. I keep a copy of every issue in iBooks so can show the other 99% of people who haven't read RAN yet, my mag... BTW, save some trees, and DON'T throw RAN away, just pass it on to the next person who HASN'T seen it....

Again, thanks Nagoya, Japan, and the whole planet (it seems) for reading and supporting YOUR magazine, RAN.

J L Gatewood

Chief Editor

www.ranmagazine.com

www.facebook.com/ranmagazine

www.twiter.com/ranmagazine

Posted via email from RANdom musings from Nagoya

RANunplugged: Thank You!

2010-07-20T15:54:00.001+09:00

Well it looks like we've done it again--yet another successful charity event at the Hard Rock Cafe in Nagoya.

We raised over ¥30,000 in donations to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. And we had a damn good time doing it too. Our Photo Editor, Achim Runnebaum snapped off lots of good shots, and I got tons of video of the event. So since a picture is worth 1000 words, heres 70,000 thank yous!!

One more time, with Charisma (via Japan Times)

2010-07-13T15:52:00.001+09:00

via search.japantimes.co.jp

I'm thinking of doing a local spin on the "Charisma Man (also Charisma Girl)" phenomenon here in the Tokai... I want both Japanese and Non-Japanese to weigh in on this... Read on, please...

One more time — with Charisma
Charles Lewis looks back at the Charisma Man phenomenon and wonders: Where are they now?
By CHARLES LEWIS
Hide the booze and lock up your daughters: Charisma Man is back. The lovable loser who was constantly broke, dateless and swilling rotgut at home is back in Japan, with a pocket full of folding money, a girl on each arm and a chilled glass of first-class sake in his hand.

Who is he, this mystery man, this lothario? Where does he get the dose of kryptonite that transforms him from a pathetic bungler into a suave and debonair man of the world?

Perhaps the origins of Charisma Man can be traced back to the late '80s and early '90s, when emasculated Japanese males known as ashi-kun (guys used for their cars) and meshi-kun (guys who would fork out for fancy meals), and hapless foreign eigo-kun (guys exploited for their English) were supposedly being taken advantage of by women here in Japan. It was around this time that young Western men could be seen in major urban centers strutting about in suits and ties to impress the girls on a night out.

Big English conversation schools, which had been expanding rapidly for a number of years, were bringing in large numbers of young people from English-speaking countries to teach all those classes. While there were plenty of women among the intrepid pedagogues making the journey to Japan, the majority were men. It's not surprising that a surge in the number of young foreign males in Japan led to a spike in cross-cultural liaisons.

Freed from whatever social constraints they may have had to put up with back home — cliques, bullies, small-town life, and so on — these guys could relax and enjoy being themselves in Japan. And many of them took full advantage of the opportunities that came knocking.

The girls who hooked up with all those Charisma Men had come of age during the bubble economy of the '80s. Image was everything, and having a handsome foreigner for a boyfriend was trendy. There was a period of time when fancy restaurants and expensive hotels were booked up years in advance on Christmas Eve, because that was what a real date was supposed to be like on that special day — with a nice present thrown in, of course. Society celebrated the superficial and shallow.

Learning English was popular at the time, and eikaiwa school ads abounded, constantly airing on TV, displayed on walls and poles, just about everywhere. Posters on trains featured handsome young bucks grinning at their students through sets of pearly-white teeth. What better way to enjoy speaking English than with a Charisma Man?

There was a kind of sexual revolution going on during the '90s. If you believed the media hype, women were becoming more assertive about choosing the boyfriend they wanted. The stereotype of the shy office lady giving chocolate to the man she liked on Valentine's Day — and hoping he would ask her out — was becoming a thing of the past, we were told. Women had begun earning higher salaries and were more independent, and they knew what they wanted and how to get it.

So what became of the Charisma Men of yore?

Eric is a former Charisma Man who gave up all the glamour and now leads a life of mundane domesticity, changing diapers, getting the bills paid and attending events at kindergartens.

His face lights up when he reminisces about his salad days.

"In the mid-90s, Charisma Man groupies would hang out at Metropolitan Plaza Park near Ikebukuro Station on Friday and Saturday nights. They gathered in small groups so I used to go over there with a couple of buddies. The girls in Shibuya were too young, the ones in Shinjuku too loose, but the ones in Ikebukuro were just right."

Mike, too, lived the Charisma Man dream to the fullest. He brushes a tear out of the corner of his eye as he pines for a bygone age.

"I remember the hard looks I used to get from my neighbors at my old apartment. I'm sure they hated me because of the parade of sweet young things that would regularly troop to my front door. Now the only issues I have with neighbors are about smoke from my barbecue or my kids kicking a ball against somebody's wall."

Some guys have refused to let go, and make vain efforts to keep the good times rolling. Deep into middle age, these Charisma Men — past their prime, with expanding stomachs and graying hair — spend most of their time reliving their glory days. Resembling over-the-hill alpha male gorillas, they sit with beers in their hands in front of dwindling, aging harems as the new generation of Charisma Men stroll proudly by with the cream of the crop.

Of course, not all foreign men in Japan are — or ever were — Charisma Men. Some are exactly the gawky, bumbling nerds that Western Woman sees them as — guys who wouldn't have much luck with the ladies no matter where they were. These are the guys struggling to keep their cell phones stocked with numbers and their calendars full. International parties and "friendship sites" that cater to this crowd do a brisk business. Then there are the sprawling big-city bars and clubs that draw an international clientele, full of unaccompanied foreign men sullenly talking to one another as they slowly sip their drinks on a Friday night.

Times have changed, but surely there are still some Charisma Men out there. Their ranks have no doubt been thinned by the implosion of a couple of large English schools and a stagnant economy, but to the true Charisma Man that can mean only one thing: less competition.

Posted via email from RANdom musings from Nagoya

BBB2010: Bus B GAWN!!

2010-07-05T15:58:00.001+09:00

WOW... We really did it this time... We SOLD OUT the bus to BangBangBoogie in FUKUI!! Ain't no mo' seats!! So unless you're gonna be riding out in your own personal car, or braving taking a 3 hour JR ride... Well, you've literally MISSED THE BUS!!

But there's some good news... If we can get another 8-10 tickets sold, we're gonna get a VAN and make sure we get y'all to BangBangBoogie too. (No it's not gonna beGary The Mover's van!)

So let me know if you're interested, and we can do this thing here!

Leave a comment here if you're interested, or send some mail to editor@ranmagazine.com!

For those taking their own car though, we have maps for ya right'chea...

Posted via email from RANdom musings from Nagoya

SummerInTheCity: RAN Issue 6 is ONLINE!!

2010-06-28T17:35:00.000+09:00

Its HOT in herrrr, so take off all ya clothes... My ellow hometown brougham Nelly made that a hot line about 6-7 summers back... But it still seems like a good idea, right? So this time around we're bearing it all for you, our dear readers! (But only in a psychological way... well sorta-- I'll make it clear in a second, I promise...)

Why not beat the heat the RAN way: Read the new issue of RAN cover-to-cover online in the comfort of your エアーコン room, or if Chuu-Den is puttin' a hurtin' on the finances, check this issue out at the internet cafe, or even on your keitai at http://m.ranmagazine.com. Also thanks to Apple releasing iOS4 and iBooks--I'm going to make the issue available via iTunes really soon-- stay tuned.

This month's issue, SummerInTheCity... Go Nude Nagoya or Don't Go At All. Once again we're proclaming our love of the nude human body as art in the form of an art expo we're co-sponsoring. Dodgy3. Read about it on page 12. Can't go all the way nekkid? Ok, then just go halfsies. In case you've been hiding under a rock, we got this BangBangBoogie thang goin' on real soon. Chill at the beach with the RAN family. But first read about it on page 22.

It's hotter 'n hell outside-- grab a cold one, and check out RAN. We got your summertime hook up in the Chukyo.

RANmagazine Issue 6 July/August 2010

RAN Unplugged

2010-06-10T10:34:00.001+09:00

We're putting together another charity event at the Hard Rock Cafe!

Our last event, RockThisTown, was very successful and raised some cash for Haiti, It also gave the chance for Nagoya to see some of the hottest local talent in town! So we decided to do it one more time...

This one's an Unplugged event; you remember MTV right? This means only acoustic instruments-- no electric guitars, drum machines, synths, etc.

Its going down Friday July 16th, from 7pm 'til 10pm.

We're gonna ask for at least a 500yen donation music charge to be given to charities to help clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico... What a devastating ecological disaster....

More details to come of course, so please watch this space!!

RAN Bang Bang Boogie Beach Party!

2010-06-04T14:07:00.000+09:00

Tickets will be available from RAN Magazine, and will be sold at various locations around Nagoya starting from June 11th-THEY WILL GO FAST!!!

Join by reserved ticket ONLY - event ticket cost - ¥4000 plus for ¥2000 bus transportation to and from Nagoya--limited seats!

IF YOU ARE COMING BY CAR, YOUR COST IS ONLY ¥4000/food/drink/entertainment.

To reserve your ticket, sign up here, and we will contact you to arrange payment and get the tickets to you.

Includes: Beach BBQ - food, drink. Live Music, DJ, Dancers, games, prizes, all on a PRIVATE BEACH location! Sick.

RESERVE NOW by filling out the form below...

チケットはRANmagazineからされ、7月11日はら発売。チケットはすぐ売り切りなので、なるべく早くGET！

参加予約チケットのみで - イベントのチケットのコスト - 4000円プラス交通機関 - 限られた席！

含まれる：ビーチバーベキュー - 食べ放題、飲み放題。ライブミュージック、DJ、ダンサー、ゲーム、賞品は、すべてのプライベートビーチの場所に！

リザーブするには：

1.下のお問い合わせフォームに記入し、チケットを私たちができるフックをアップ！

2. また、個人的には切符を得ることができると現金で支払う。チケットはMisfitsとmondo books書籍店で購入することができます。その他の場所未定。

今すぐ予約@ http://ran4.us/bangbangboogie2010

Check this website frequently for additional info-- we'll be posting up the band lineup, ticket outlet locations, along with other info very soon.

For more info, just leave a post here in the comments section, or

call TD at 080 5102 2627

This is sure to be a wild party-- if yo went to Rock This Town at Hard Rock in March, just imagine what we'll get into at the BEACH!!! YEAH!

UPDATE!!

We have now included a map here just in case you want to skip taking the bus and get there on your own. The buses we're providing is ¥2000 roundtrip, but you're welcome to pile into a car and make your way up there on your own.

Nagoya → Beach Map

View this in Google Maps Here...

Itsuhata Beach Area Map

As you can see here, the beach is very nice and clean

View this in a Google Map

RANmagazine--Out on delivery

2010-05-04T13:03:00.001+09:00

RAN Magazine Hot off the press! Sagawa Delivery to the rescue!
I'm out putting RANmagazine in the usual spots-- Maruzen, Shooters, No 1 travel, etc.
Get yours NOW!

via facebook.com/RANmagazine

Pick up your copy today!

Posted via web from RANdom musings from Nagoya

RAN Magazine Issue Five. Happy Golden Week!

2010-05-02T23:06:00.003+09:00

This is Issue Five for May and June 2010. Happy Golden Week!

Look for the hard copy in the usual spots soon; looks like our printers took an early holiday... Ahh, well, with this great weather who can blame them...

RAN Magazine Issue5 May/June 2010

Thank you Nagoya! We ROCKed THIS TOWN!! (UPDATED)

2010-03-07T12:27:00.002+09:00

To everyone that was there: thanks for coming-- I'm still exhausted from Friday, so I'm late in posting some pix of the event. Also if you have some pictures you want to share, please share them here or just go ahead and email them to editor@ranmagazine.com

Thank you for coming out and supporting Haiti and RAN magazine.

UPDATE! We raised just over 60,000 yen towards HAITI and the EARTHQUAKE RELIEF FUND. This amount will be delivered to the JAPAN RED CROSS via the HARD ROCK CAFE sometime this week.

We are planning another event really soon; this was the most talked about topic during and after Rock This Town. As long as the community supports RAN, RAN supports YOU. Like Maxwell said, We Are You, You Are US.

Here's some pix from our photo editor Achim Runnebaum.

Posted via email from RANdom musings from Nagoya

RANmag Issue Four hits the streets!

2010-02-26T17:14:00.002+09:00

OH SCHNAP Issue Four is OUT
This one is the Music Issue
Also... Don't forget about our Haiti Benefit Concert at The Hard Rock Cafe, 3/5 @ 7pm (http://ran4.us/rtt-2010)

Go grab it at these places....

Maruzen
Hub Sakae
Freebell
Shooters
Plastic Factory
Bintou Braids
Misfits
Deep Blue

And... Read it online down below here! (iPhone users--You can now grab the PDF too! )

Posted via email from RANdom musings from Nagoya

How to give aid to Haiti from Japan

2010-02-24T11:58:00.001+09:00

Many people have reached out to me and asked if there were some ways they could help the victims of the quake in Haiti from here in Japan... I'm currently scouring the sites in Japanese to find one that has some easy to follow info, so those that wanna donate a few ¥en can do so...

Again, the easiest way would be via the internet either through Paypal (http://goo.gl/tZfZ) or Google (http://sn.im/googhaitirelief). Both have set up crisis donation minisites and will accept Paypal/Google checkout of course, and also credit cards.

I'm looking for someplace here in Japan that will accept bank transfer payments or some sort of slip you can take to your nearest conbini and donate that way... If you know of a way, please email me at editor@ranmagazine.com

Don't forget about our event, RockThisTown 2010: RAN/Rock/Relief. Come on out and listen to Nag's best bands and get your charity on. We will be selling some nifty RAN t-shirts, along with taking donations of all kinds; the RAN staff are putting together a care package that will be sent to Haiti through the Japan Red Cross.

Posted via email from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

ROCK THIS TOWN 2010 (update)

2010-02-22T18:15:00.005+09:00

Staff illustrator Adam Pasion totally hooked the poster for our event up--just like how he's totally bad-@$$ at anything else involving art skills and booze.

In case you ain't heard, March 5th--Hard Rock Cafe Nagoya @ 7pm. We do it for Haiti. Come out and enjoy some of Nagoya's best bands, good eats, and drinks... But please come ready to open your hearts and wallets to help the people of Haiti.

More information can be found on our RockThisTown mini site at http://ran4.us/rtt-2010

Nagoya Walk-a-Thon: Sunday, May 23, 2010

2010-02-09T16:05:00.001+09:00

It is that time again! It is time for the ACCJ / NIS Walkathon and International Charity Festival.

This year on May 23rd, the Walkathon passes its 19th year and our second year at Tsuruma Park, near Tsurumai Station. Every year the Nagoya Walkathon helps to build bridges between the Japanese and international communities by bringing together over two thousand members of those communities to raises money in support of vital work being conducted by local non profit and charitable organizations in the Chubu region. Last year, despite the down economy, the 2009 Walkathon raised 5.5 million yen in support of worthy organizations, and with your help we can reach our goal of 8 million yen this year.
Besides being altruistic this event is a blast. Every year the Walkathon brings out the best in local foreign and Japanese bands and talents to entertain and enliven the more than 2000 people in the crowd, and with a selection of food that you will not find at any other festival in Japan, they never leave hungry either.

Come on out this year, and meet the charities that benefit from this Nagoya institution, and enjoy the fun, foods, music, and crowds that make this event special. This is our community too, so come out and support it!

For event information see our website!
http://www.nagoyawalkathon.com
On Facebook: http://ran4.us/NagoyaWalkathon

7-11 offering city services (via Japan Times)

2010-02-03T14:45:00.001+09:00

Seven-Eleven Japan Co. launched a new service Tuesday enabling customers to get residence and personal seal certification at its convenience stores in Tokyo and Chiba Prefecture instead of going to city offices.

Municipal service: Seven-Eleven Japan President Ryuichi Isaka (third from left) helps kick off the convenience store chain's issuance of residence and registered seal certificates at an outlet in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, on Tuesday. KYODO PHOTO

The issuance of "juminhyo" (residence certificates) and "inkan toroku shomeisho" (registered seal certificates) marks a first for convenience stores and for now is available only to residents of Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, the suburb of Mitaka, and people living in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture.

The service will be extended to all 12,600 Seven-Eleven outlets in 38 prefectures by May, according to the company, which is under the wing of Seven & I Holdings Co.

Foreigners will not receive residence certificates until the revision of the immigration law and the resident registration law, passed last July, takes effect in July 2012.

Japanese and foreigners need a certificate of personal seals only when they establish a business, make a big purchase such as a house, or borrow money. Such seals are not required, for example, when signing an apartment rental contract.

Seven-Eleven hopes the new service attracts more customers.

The company has been working with the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry and local authorities since spring 2008 to launch the service.

Customers will be able to insert their resident registry network cards into a new terminal for identification and get a printout of the document they need. The fee will be ¥200 to ¥250 for each copy.

Printouts are forgery-proof to make sure personal data are not falsified, Seven-Eleven said, adding the terminal network has advanced security features to protect personal information.

via search.japantimes.co.jp

Some things that we can take away from this as foreign nationals here in the Chubu region are:

* The immigration law that passed in July 2009 means we WILL have to register and carry a Juuminhyo (住民票) card instead of the Gaikokujin Torokusho (外国人登録書) that we carry now; it will have our gaijin status on it and inside it along with other data

* No doubt this data includes healthcare enrollment status--if you haven't taken care of that, NOW is the time to do so. That part of the law goes into effect in April 2010--less than 2 months away now.

* You can take care of a lot of the more routine matters that take place at city hall/ward offices at convenience stores by the time all this goes into effect for us... Well at least 7-11. I'm willing to bet good beer ¥ though that the other chains will pick up on this by the time we get to do it in 2011...

* Conbinis are the most awesome thing about living in Japan still-- validate your hanko, pay up on your scooter insurance, grab a beer, a sandwich and a spare pair of underwear in the same place!

Posted via web from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

Immigration, Healthcare and Your Employer

2010-02-02T16:31:00.003+09:00

By Jason L. Gatewood

If you've been under a rock, then perhaps you don't know that starting from April 2010, a slew of changes to Japan's visa and immigration laws will start to go into effect. In order to create a more centralized control over immigration, the Misistry of Justice will be enacting such laws as the creation of an Immgration Card with an IC chip embedded inside to replace the "Gaijin Cards" handed out by your local government offices. This new card will hold data such as passport validity, visa status, current residence and current employer. Also starting at the same time, visa renewal will dependent on payment of all residency taxes and also enrollment in one of Japan's national health insurance programs. This one requirement is a point of contention as a lot of foreign workers here in Nagoya and elsewhere across Japan aren't either properly informed of the requirement to enroll in national healthcare, are unable to enroll due to their employer's unwillingness to enroll them, or their employer flat out misinforming them.

Rumors abound, and sometimes it seems there is no one in the corner of a stranger in a strange land working under different, sometimes strange working conditions. However, there is the General Union, a legal union in Japan, organized to fight for the rights of all foreign workers, the majority of which are Language teachers in public, private, and conversational schools. The union has been spearheading the crusade to make more of these businesses and organizations conform to the same standards as most employers must hold when employing Japanese citizens. I had a chance to sit down with the General Union’s General Secretary, Dennis Tesolat, in an attempt to get some clearer answers on this issue.

RAN: Can you confirm that health insurance will be mandatory for visa renewal?

Tesolat: That is correct. The General Union (GU) held talks with immigration officials this summer and they confirmed that to have a visa renewed it will be necessary to present proof of enrollment in an “approved” insurance scheme. And in fact, there is anecdotal evidence that in some regions, immigration is not waiting until April. We have heard a number of direct reports of people needing to show proof of enrollment already.

RAN: I've heard the same thing-- I went to the immigration office to renew my visa recently, and I was told that I "may" have to show my insurance card when I pick up the new visa. I went back 2 weeks later to get the stamp, but no one asked to see anything insurance related. But it's coming soon, since they gave me a warning, right? So when you say an “approved” insurance scheme, what exactly do you mean?

Tesolat: Under Japanese law residents must be enrolled in either Shakai Hoken (Employees’ Health and Pension Insurance) or Kokumin Kenko Hoken (National Health Insurance). Until recently, the government has mostly turned a blind eye to this when it comes to foreign residents.

RAN: There are a lot of foreign residents enrolled in private insurance schemes. Will that still be acceptable?

Tesolat: No it won’t be. Immigration officials were quite firm on this point. The law only allows these insurances to be sold as a supplement to either Kokumin Kenko Hoken or Shakai Hoken.

RAN: I know more than a few people will be very surprised to hear that; many of us are told that private insurance is cheaper and still just as accepted. But now, no more right?

Tesolat: There has been much debate in the foreign community regarding the benefits of Shakai Hoken versus Kokumin Kenko Hoken versus private insurance. The new immigration guideline ends this debate.

RAN: So what will happen if someone goes down to Immigration with only a private insurance scheme? Will they end up at Centrair on a plane back to their home country 6 hours later?

Tesolat: Immigration assured us that they are not looking to use this as an excuse to revoke visas.They tell us the process will be much like when you a missing a document for the renewal process; you'll be given a short period – maybe 10 days – to produce evidence of proper enrollment before the visa is issued.

RAN: So where does that leave those without Kokumin Kenko Hoken or Shakai Hoken? You get the shaft?

Tesolat: Just like Japanese citizens, foreign residents have no other option.

RAN: OK so how do people get enrolled? Is it going to be the same kind of run-around like getting the "gaijin card", or a driver's license?

Tesolat: For Kokumin Kenko Hoken it is just a trip to the local city office (ward office, city hall, town hall) but there is a danger in that. Depending on your period of residence, you could be hit with a back bill of up to 2 years premiums. And there is an added danger. It is also law that you be enrolled in the National Pension. Enforcement is still in its infancy but we hear credible stories of people getting back-bills for the pension too.

RAN: Wait... So even though people were told that it was perfectly OK to tote private insurance, just to get on the correct system, you'd face a penalty of paying BACK BILLS? That makes no sense. If you didn't wind up in the hospital, why'd you have pay it backward? I have heard that Shakai Hoken is a better scheme. How do people get enrolled on that?

Tesolat: You’re right. Shakai Hoken is a much better scheme and is usually cheaper as the company has to pay at least half the premiums. But it is up to your employer to enroll you. You cannot enroll yourself.

RAN: How do you qualify for it and how do you get your employer to enroll you? If it's compulsory, it should be automatic right?

Tesolat: Basically the law says that barring a few exceptions, all employees have to be enrolled. But again, up until now, this law hasn’t been enforced much. The General Union recognized the problem a number of years back and began a campaign for a voluntary, gradual enrollment of all foreigner language teachers into the scheme. We were successful at two of the larger language school chains and a number of the smaller ones. One national chain rolled out a system where teachers could choose from two different contracts, with one offering shakai hoken for slightly increased hours and salary. In recent talks they told us they expect many more teachers to choose this option with the impending changes in April.

Another nationwide chain eventually implemented a contract with all teachers being enrolled. They also increased monthly salaries by about 20,000 yen to cover some of the costs.

RAN: What is the union doing about companies that don’t offer Shakai Hoken? Isn't that against the law since all companies must offer it?

Tesolat: There are a lot of companies that blatantly break the law and others that skirt around it. ALT dispatch companies, especially in Tokai, are a prime example of this. But I won’t name names as we want to give them time to fix the problem before the April deadline.

One of the measures we are taking is talking to the Boards of Educations and demanding that they take responsibility for seeing that teachers are enrolled. We are receiving some very positive responses and some negative responses. Our union members want enrollment and if it doesn’t happen soon we will be taking legal action against some companies and also naming the Boards of Education in the complaints.

RAN: What about the pension question I had earlier? Since a lot of foreign workers aren't going to retire here in Japan, is there a possible refund on this part of the hoken system? What are the breakdowns of the refund, if any at all?

Tesolat: First let me point out that employers’ often don't tell employees that the pension refund under the Shakai Hoken system is significantly better that that under the Kokumin Nenkin pension.

RAN: I would say they neglect to talk about the pension refund aspect of the entire system at all, but please continue...

Tesolat: One other aspect employers fail to mention is the Shakai Hoken system offers 66% salary protection if you cannot work because of injury or illness. Most people fresh of the plane don’t think insurance is important but every year we deal with a number of people who end up sick or injured and without insurance. These private insurances aren’t sufficient and there are many cases of people being denied coverage once their private insurance runs out. They can’t pay their hospital bills and they don’t have an income.

RAN: Speaking of which, I know we agreed to include your own story in the interview but I have been hesitant to raise it. Can you explain to the readers why the interview is taking place here in this hospital?

Tesolat: It’s ironic that after fighting for shakai hoken for more than 5 years I may well become the new poster boy for our campaign and I thank my lucky stars that my own company obeyed the law and enrolled me.

To cut a long story short, I had a few hours of intense back pain and then suddenly I couldn’t move below the waist. I was rushed to hospital and had spinal surgery that day. It’s a rare condition and seems to be congenital. The final prognosis isn’t known at this point but I am slowly starting to recover feeling and a small amount of movement. I am receiving intensive rehabilitation and my intention is to be able to walk out of here.

I have a young family to care for, so the salary protection is a life saver. Without it I might end up losing everything. And if I had had private insurance, most likely they'd withdraw coverage after 6 months. And like I said before, we see this all the time – I’m just one of many.

RAN: You’ve put a personal face on the story for me Dennis. Let’s hope for a speedy recovery. I hope we can talk again, because there are a lot more questions my readers are sure to raise.

Learn more about you and your employer’s obligations. The General Union Nagoya is holding an open seminar on Sunday, 1 November from 5:00pm to 6:30pm at their office, a short 10 minute walk southeast of Nagoya station. Please see http://www.generalunion.org/tokaimap for a map and details.

[of course this has passed, but you can find out more about the General Union at www.generalunion.org -Ed.]

Rock This Town 2010. RAN/Rock/Relief: A concert to benefit Haiti 3/5/2010

2010-01-27T15:46:00.005+09:00

A BENEFIT CONCERT IN NAGOYA FOR THE
People of HAITI

On March 5th, 7pm, inside the Nagoya HARD ROCK CAFE-
RAN Magazine, Nagoya's NEWEST ENGLISH MAGAZINE-
Will be hosting an event called
-ROCK THIS TOWN 2010-
--RAN/Rock/Relief--
To raise MONEY and AWARENESS for the people of HAITI in their time of need.
Natural Disaster can strike ANYTIME, and Japan is a country where Natural Disaster is ALWAYS CLOSE.
Please come out and bring your cameras and recorders and help Us TELL NAGOYA about this special event 7pm on Friday, MARCH 5, 2010.
It is a FREE EVENT, but we will be accepting DONATIONS towards the
victims of the January 12th Haiti Earthquake.

PERFORMANCES BY: Bone Zero, Tomo Shaggar Band, Jet Shamisen, Mike Wade, Vinnie Vintage, Blanka, UnSound, and more. Band card subject to change. Donations of clothing and canned goods also accepted. All monies and materials collected will go toward victims of the tremors that struck Haiti on January 12th, 2010. Food & drink fees are not included.

PLEASE HELP US TO HELP THEM.
Support the World.
Support Yourself.

RSVP on our Facebook Event Page: http://snipr.com/ran-rtt2010

visit us: http://www.ranmagazine.com

friend us: http://facebook.com/ranmagazine
follow us: @RANmagazine http://twitter.com/ranmagazine

Official Event Poster can be found here

I'm such a busy bee, editing @RANmagazine all day! Wait til issue 4 hits, along with a BIG event on March 5th...

2010-01-23T14:58:00.001+09:00

Whatever you do, if you're anywhere in the Chukyo the night of March 5th, make sure you keep that evening OPEN! Stay tuned; big news coming. (Hint: If you liked the RAN Halloween party, you'll LOVE this...)

Posted via web from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

RAN Lovers Anonymous

2010-01-19T22:17:00.001+09:00

Thanx Dani!

If you love RANmagazine, why not send us a shot of you and the mag for our website? And to let us know that there are actual HUMANS reading our crap...

Posted via web from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

Haiti is in our ♥

2010-01-14T09:42:00.001+09:00

I wanna take some time to pray for the people of Haiti today. I have had a close friend from there for years-- we used to date in fact, and she is one of the sweetest people I've ever had in my life. Through her, I found out about my Haitian brothers and sisters-- we are all a part of the African Diaspora you know... They live in one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth, but it is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Think about that for a minute. I have been through two 7.0 and above quakes, both in Los Angeles while I was a teen in the 1990s. The worst thing that happened I remember, is the water heater shook loose and sprung a leak in our garage. We had it replaced the next day. However the same intensity jolt in Haiti causes damage like this--

Click to view large

Download full size (75 KB)

Click to view large

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Click to view large

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This is what this place SHOULD look like by the way...

Today, my ♥ is with Haiti and all her sons and daughters.

If you want to donate some ¥en to the victims of the Haiti quake, please visit Google's Donation page with updated links and resources: http://sn.im/googhaitirelief

Posted via web from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

Cure for the Mondays at Misfits

2010-01-13T04:24:00.001+09:00

By J. L. Gatewood

Yup, Mondays suck. No one likes 'em... At all. The work-week starts, and the countdown 'til the weekend begins. Some of us get Mondays off though; think eikaiwa workers, retail and hotel employees too... Monday can be even worse for them because there's a whole day of nothing, followed by an evening of nuthin! Lucky for you, RAN has what you need to break the Monday Monotony!

Nagoya's smallest gaijin bar is big on do-it-yourself entertainment every Monday. If you can play an instrument, sing, are good at drinking, talking, and eating, or at least 2 of the above, get your tail over there and check the action.

Stevie P cooks something good up to eat (we had a ¥1000 steak dinner last night yo!) and Mike Wade tends bar between their turns on the mic. And if you got some chops on the stage, you too can get your performance on-- A lot of local talent drops by to jam with the Dynamic Duo of Nagoya, like D Brown on drums and Takeshi on guitar and Timmy with that soulful harmonica...

I have a blast with these guys, even though I have the musical talent of a three-toed sloth on heroin, so i just know you will...

View Larger Map

When In Rome: “The Pursuit Of Jappiness”

2010-01-08T11:43:00.001+09:00

By TD Houchen, Illustrations by Adam Pasion

“Hey boy....take a walk....on the wild side..”

--Lou Reed

Let’s jump right into it, shall we?

Back on the dating scene again, and it still sucks. A lot of these Japanese girls need a serious attitude adjustment, or at least a firm talking to. Too many foreign guys are acting like wet paper towels by letting these girls get away with too much nonsense, and I know you know what I am talking about. Social conventions and cultural characteristics aside, these chicks are pissing me off.. Single exactly 3 months, I am fed up.

‘Sumimasen’ your damn self. Act right. Male/female relationships are hard enough as it is. We’re from Mars, they’re from Venus, or who knows really where women are from. It’s hard to get together, like my man Deadly says, throw in the different cultures and different expectations and look out she’s about to blow!! No, I don’t mean it like that. Get your head out of the gutter.

Look. I am no Prince Charming. In fact, some of my ex-es want me dead. But at least they want me. Japanese women seem to feel they have no obligation whatsoever to stick to plans, call when they say they will, be where they said they’d be, explain why they came on so strong upon first meeting you, and then suddenly vanishing into the mist, be clear about their intentions even remotely, or explain any of their actions or non-actions or anything they’ve said, nor, any of their hints, guesses or behavior. I had one girl tell me there was a cockroach in her room, this was a cue for me to come over and be romantic with her, I should have known, would you have? This was after she had broken it off with me. Ne. Mind reading in Japanese? Come on man. I’m learning, but I blew that one. JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT.

Never.

So, I’ve compiled a short list of certain “characters” in order for you to identify who it is you’re dealing with at any given time. I’m sure there are a thousand others, this is my list, if you’ve got more, send them in and we’ll print them up, or at least, throw them up on the website.

For the record, I’m not saying us foreign guys are perfect. Far from it, most of us are juvenile delinquents posing as English teachers, there, I said it, but for the most part, we’re simple, we’re just not smart enough to come up with all the games and oddball tactics it seems these J-Girls display, we want hot ramen and that’s about it. Capiche?

Along with the description, I’m including a subjective score-guide that relates to the chances for you and said female to have a fulfilling relationship. A = Great Possibility for a decent relationship, he shoots he scores! B = Nice Chance, Go for it, if it doesn’t work out completely, could be fun at least. C= Well, can she cook? Does she have a car? D= You’re probably better off by yourself, and F= Run. Fast. Now. Far.

Remember, this list is no way exhaustive of all the different types of women you’ll encounter “out there”, and the grading guide is also completely subjective. Hell, you might like women who complain about everything, all the time, constantly, one mans zero is another mans 10, or something like that…

Onto the List then:

The English-Champion Hamster

Come on, you’ve met her. She approaches you eagerly, “…Hi, I’m Tomoko/Atsuko/Yuko/Junko/Pluto…”, whatever, (ever notice no Japanese girls’ names start with “B”? or “Q”? or “X”? What’s with that?)—“..nice to meet you..”, she says. She’s all bright and bubbly, like a glass of Nihonjin pink champale, genki beyond belief. She speaks English, or so you think. You chat her up a bit, exchange info, and set a date to meet again. You hook up with The English Champion, only to discover that on your FIRST MEETING, she exhausted her supply of limited English, and YOU’RE HER NEW TEACHER. You spend the entire evening explaining your every word and gesturing like a madman and asking and answering questions like, “what food do you like “ over and over again. You realize you’re just teaching elementary school, and wonder why you aren’t getting paid for it. Sure, she’s cute, but then again, so are hamsters, and you don’t date hamsters do you? It’s frustrating, and you fell for it. Next time, upon first meeting, find out her English level by bringing along a game of Scrabble wherever you go, sure it’s bulky, but it works.

Grade C-. (Or C+, if you’ve got the patience.)

The Keitai Queen

You hate her, but you like her. Maybe, you can’t remember. You met her like, 3 months ago. Sparks, or something akin to sparks, flew at that first meeting. You excitedly exchanged info. You’ve been emailing back and forth now for what seems like eternity. You can barely remember what she looks like anymore. Your fingers hurt. You’ve asked her to meet you out in person 348 times already. She doesn’t acknowledge your requests, or always cancels that same day. You know you’re acting like a complete moron, but you don’t care. You simultaneously cringe and get excited every time your phone alerts you that she’s mailed you yet again. She won’t stop, and, like P Diddy, you can’t stop/won’t stop yourself.. It’s driving you crazy, but she seems to relish the whole drawn out, useless, empty, maddening and brain-frying cyber-romance you’re having. You mail her immediately after receiving her mails, but she takes hours, sometimes days to mail you back. You crave those mails, and as much as you hate them, you know it’s all you’ll ever get from her, and you need them. Just when you think she won’t ever mail you again, your stupid phone lights up, letting you know she’s hooked you back into it one more time. You hate her, but you need her.

Grade D-. Face it, she’ll never meet you, or she would have already, give it up man. Get a new keitai email address.

The Unexamined Soul

Look, I’m no genius, but at least I know what I like. I’ve been out with too many women here who, upon you asking, “..what food do you like..”, which itself is a silly question, or, “..what music do you like..”, or, “..what do you like doing..”, I get that infamously annoying, “..ehhhhhhhhhhh?”, as if the thought never entered their minds. I mean, it leaves me wondering what exactly to Japanese dudes talk about with Japanese women? I know they aren’t discussing politics or philosophy. Come on J-girls, you don’t know what food you like? Are you serious? What tastes good in your mouth? What do you find yourself eating often? JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION, is it really so hard? Please, let’s not even get into more difficult questions like, “..what are your dreams..”, I can see bubbles coming out of their ears for questions like this.

Grade C+ or B. They can be opened up and taught, there’s hope for these women.

The Klingon

She’s there when you need her, and she’s there when you don’t. She calls you incessantly, and will-not-leave-you-alone. Your friends are wondering if you’ve grown a new body part, but no, it’s just your girlfriend. You wonder how she ever had a life without you; she seems to live, breathe, eat, think, speak and dream you and only you. She is crowding out your hobbies, friends, and your oxygen. She gives new meaning to the song “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”. She shows up at the most inopportune times and is a bit like a rash. She’s up under you 24-7 and it’s KILLING YOU. She stands so close to you that sometimes you step on her, or accidentally elbow her in her nose or neck, which of course, she doesn’t mind. She’s reading this over your shoulder right now, you couldn’t get rid of her if you were a murderer, but you’re thinking about it..

Grade C- or D. Some guys like this kind of thing... Go figure.

The Superflake

The following is a true story.

A friend of mine was seeing a J-girl for a short while. Things were going smoothly, or sort of smoothly anyway. One day, they’re having a phone conversation, J-girls English wasn’t great, and so, Our Hero asked politely, “..excuse me, can you speak up a bit? I can’t really hear you…”, to which, J-girl responded, “..what? You know what, I don’t think this is working out, I think we should stop seeing each other..”, and promptly hung up and never called Our Hero again. (*I'll 'fess up; Our Hero is ME! And I couldn't make this up if I tried... --Ed.)

Huh?

How about this one; another friend recently told me about a girl who absolutely freaked out because he didn’t like hot sauce. I kid you not. Fickle much?

Then there are the women who, in the beginning, find you attractive because you are foreign, but, 3 or 4 months into the relationship, they’re imploring you to “..be more Japanese..”, “..learn more Japanese..”, or openly insulting your home country and culture, those very things that brought you together in the first place.

In the immortal words of Ralph Kramden, “..to the moon Alice, to the moon..”

Grade F. You can't do anything with these women. At all. Run. Fast. Far. Now.

The Disappearing Act

You know her, or at least you thought you did. Things were going great, or at least, again, you thought they were. It’s happened too many times to count since I’ve been here. Meet a woman, share some (what you think and what seems to be) great times. Everything you’ve done together, she’s been a willing and eager participant. She’s never registered one iota of reservation about anything you’ve suggested, never uttered a word of discontent or dissatisfaction, never even frowned. You’ve been having a great time with her, so why has she suddenly vanished? Won’t return my calls, won’t return my mails, she’s disappeared into the mist. What. The. Hell.

This, alas, is a typical J-girl move which could mean one of any number of things. It could mean she liked you, but didn’t like you that much. It could mean she liked you too much, and got scared of her own feelings, and so instead of dealing with it, she decided to just let it go, it would never fit with the neatly prescribed life that her society has ordained her to have (!) It could mean she noticed a piece of spinach in your teeth one day after dinner, and just couldn’t handle it. It could mean she was only spending time with you to get back at her husband/family/boyfriend/job/friends/etc, and now, she’s sufficiently done her duty and it’s time for her to move on. It could mean she was recalled back to the factory for upgrades and improvements. Who knows really. But one thing is clear, she is GONE AND NOT COMING BACK. (It also could mean that you told her to talk louder into the phone! --Ed.)

Grade F-. How can you have a relationship with an invisible person?

The Decepticon

Damn, she’s fine! Or better spoken, she appears to be fine. In all my years I have never met a woman better at self-improvement with make up, clothes, accessories and curling irons than The Japanese Woman. These women sure know how to work with what they have, and, what they don’t have. False eyelashes, smothered on foundation, hair attachments, fake nails and painted on eyebrows, man, everyday is Halloween here! She’s painted, padded, plucked, polished, packaged and prepared.

Case in point: You get her home, and you’re rounding the bases. First base! Nice kiss, the lipstick comes off, but it’s all good, all women wear lipstick, but why is her skin suddenly two different tones? –and where did that other eyelash go? Weird.. Second base, uh, well, a padded bra? Hm. Well, I guess it’s okay, but damn, I didn’t know they made padded bras this padded. Third base, hm, the plot thickens-she seemed like she weighed at least a little more than a 9 year old boy when she had clothes on, didn’t she? This is becoming interesting, headed home, and you realize, wait a minute, is this the same person I was with a few hours ago? It’s like unwrapping a mummy, she’s almost not even there anymore! The deed is done, and you wake up the next morning wondering who is this person laying next to me and how did she get into my house?

Grade B. You can make it work, as long as you’re flexible, and, many times, these women have great personalities to make up for their, uh, lack in other departments. Plus, she looks great out in public.

The Bi

It seemed like a really good idea. She liked beautiful women and so do you. She had an insatiable sex drive and so do you. She wanted to have an open relationship and so do you. She was adventurous and outdoorsy and liberated and sensual and so infuriatingly annoying you wanted to kill her with your bare hands.

What were you thinking man? A bi-sexual Japanese girl? Really? Take all the hang-ups and issues a straight J-girl has, and multiply them by a thousand. Thought your straight girlfriend was flaky, finicky, weird, and more than a little touched? Man, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Imagine a woman taking a few dozen extra estrogen pills everyday. What might be the outcome? We can only imagine, better yet, don’t.

A bi J-girl?

HA.

Grade D. The first few months are exhilarating, followed by another few months of pure emotional and mental hell. Imagine a relationship with a cat, or 12 cats.

The Forever-An-Adolescent-But-She’s-Also-Completely-Unavailable

She loves Disney a little too much. She’s got Goofy and Mickey and half a dozen other small furry things dangling from her keitai. She makes funny faces and uses baby talk and all her clothes are some shade of pink. She giggles every time you touch her and she still lives at home with her parents, her grandparents, her cute dog, (whom she shows you a picture of every single time you get together), and she shares a bedroom with her 12 year old brother. She has an 11 o’clock curfew, and she works 7 days a week, plus she volunteers at the local animal shelter. She lives in Gifu, but has no car. Her best friend is her friend from first grade and they go EVERYWHERE together, and, they dress exactly alikefontfontfontfont

Posted via email from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

SEX WITH A STRANGER: INTERVIEW WITH A HEALTH CLUB WORKER

2010-01-07T03:10:00.001+09:00

By TD Houchen, Photos by Mayo Takao

Come on. Admit it. You’ve wondered what exactly goes on in those “Health Clubs” that you can’t get into, and that are sprinkled all over town. You’ve seen them, almost fully-nude pictures of luscious-looking
Japanese women brazenly displayed
on the buildings’ exterior, places called
“Mothers” or “Ecstacee” or “Bus Stop” or whatever.

Well, leave it to ya boy, me, big
TD, to dig up the dirt so you don’t have to. I hustled up a real sex worker andsat honey down and chatted her upover toast, coffee, and French fries ata local Denny’s for a few hours about her life, her work, her thoughts and her feelings about her job, which is, to pleasure Japanese men for dough 8 to 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. The things we do for yen, everyone is a prostitute at some level, someone once said that I think, and if not, I just did.
She was very “normal”, very
forthcoming, and very attractive.
Peep Game.

TD: So, what’s your name?
SW: “Mie”.
TD: Okay Mie, how old are you?
M: I’m 27.
TD: You’re very cute.
M: Thank you, you too.
TD: Go easy Mie, I’m a professional.
M; Sorry..
TD: Where do you live?
M: Nagoya, but I’m from Gifu
TD: Enough with the tiny talk, how long
have you been doing this work Mie?
M: One year or so..
TD: How did you get into this line of
business?
M: I was approached by the guys who
stand on the street, you know, with the
funny hair and pointed shoes, they are
“scouts”, they asked me if I was looking
for a job..

TD: Were you?
M: Yes, but I wasn’t looking for this
kind of job. I was looking for a job as
a cabaret girl, or a “regular” job to do
during the day….
TD: What did the scout say to you to
make you interested in doing this work?
M: He asked me to get into the
sex/Health Club industry right off. I
wasn’t sure, but he was very kind. I was
surprised. I was told that people in that
industry are all mafia-related, but the
guy who approached me wasn’t. He was
kind and so I felt I could trust him, so I decided to try it.
TD: What is the hardest thing about
doing this job?
M: Getting the customers hearts.
TD: Why do you want their hearts?
M: Because if I can get their heart, then
they will become regulars, you know,
repeat customers. I want to have the
same customers for myself because if I can get repeats, then I can get a steady
income. This job is very unstable..
TD: What do you do to get their hearts?
M: Well, I try to keep a smile on my face
always, and I try to put myself in their
shoes. I try to communicate with them
from their perspective, and I try hard to
make sure they enjoy their time with me,
but it is difficult to catch their hearts….
(She sighs heavily).
TD: Describe a session with a customer,
how does it all go down? (Pun kind of
intended..)
M: They come into the room. We greet
each other. Then we speak a little, small
talk. Then maybe we have a hug, then we
take off our clothes and take a shower,
then we have ‘mat play’, then we have
‘bed play’. After that we take another
shower, touch our bodies together, then
we talk again a little, maybe smoke a
cigarette, then we say goodbye.

TD: Sounds almost quaint. How long is
one session usually?
M; They can pay for one hour or two
hours, 60 minutes or 120 minutes.
TD: Is there any part of the session that
you especially like?
M: I like the talking when it’s all over,
because then I can know it’s over.
TD: Which part(s) do you not like?
M; The hardest part is kissing the
customers, and doing the sexual
things, because the customer is not my
boyfriend, he’s just a customer…
TD: How can you prepare your mind
and body to do these intimate things
with perfect strangers?
M: What’s perfect about them?
TD: It’s a term we use in English to
describe..nevermind, I mean, how can
you do these things with people you
don’t know at all?
M: It’s just work. I tell myself over and
over, “…this is my job, this is my job..”,
so that is what I think, it’s just a job i’m
doing now.
TD: Have you ever found yourself turned
on by any of your customers? Sexually or
otherwise?
M: I have been sexually turned on, and, I
fell in love with one of my customers, but
usually, anytime I find myself thinking,
“this feels good”, I’m surprised.
TD: Are you turned on by me right now?
M: Relax. You should relax.
TD: You’re right. So what made you fall
in love with that particular customer?
M: First, I thought he was handsome,
he was my type. Then after we were
together, we began exchanging emails. I
came to find out he was really, genuinely
kind, but eventually, I found it wasn’t
real love, just infatuation…

TD: How can you prepare your mind
and body to do these intimate things
with perfect strangers?
M: What’s perfect about them?
TD: It’s a term we use in English to
describe..nevermind, I mean, how can
you do these things with people you
don’t know at all?
M: It’s just work. I tell myself over and
over, “…this is my job, this is my job..”,
so that is what I think, it’s just a job i’m
doing now.
TD: Have you ever found yourself turned
on by any of your customers? Sexually or
otherwise?
M: I have been sexually turned on, and, I fell in love with one of my customers, but usually, anytime I find myself thinking, “this feels good”, I’m surprised.
TD: Are you turned on by me right now?
M: Relax. You should relax.
TD: You’re right. So what made you fall in love with that particular customer?
M: First, I thought he was handsome,
he was my type. Then after we were
together, we began exchanging emails. I
came to find out he was really, genuinely
kind, but eventually, I found it wasn’t
real love, just infatuation…
TD: So, it is possible for the workers to find love in these places..
M: Yes.
TD: Do you like being sexually
on while you are
working? Or do you prefer to just think ‘it’s a job’ and get it
over with?
M: The best way is for me to be naturally turned on by my customers, but most times, it isn’t like that, so, I close my eyes and imagine he
is my boyfriend.
TD: Do you think this work degrades
women?
M: At first, I wondered if men thought
the women who do this kind of work are unclean, but I do think it gives women a bad image-inside of myself, I am always fighting with my own feelings..
TD: Are you and any of the other workers very close friends?
M: No, we have shallow friendships
only.
TD: So you have a boyfriend..
M: Yes.
TD: Does he know about your job?
M; No, he doesn’t.
TD: What’s his number? Just joking,
ah, what does he think you do for your money?

M: He thinks I work at a cabaret club.
TD: If he knew about your real job, what do you think he would do? How would he take it?
M: I think he’d break up with me.
TD: So you’ll never tell him about what you do?
M: I don’t think so.
TD: Is it easy for you to become sexually aroused with your boyfriend after a day of doing this work?
M: For a while, after work, I didn’t feel
anything with my boyfriend, so I decided that on the day that I know I will meet my boyfriend, I take that day off.
TD: Nice of you…do you ever feel that
you are cheating on him?
M: In the beginning I did, but now I just tell myself “it’s just work, it’s business”, and I’m okay with it.
TD: How much longer do you plan to
do this?
M: Maybe one more year..
TD: How long to most women do this
type of work?
M: The longest I’ve heard is 10 years, but women who are doing this move around from club to club, the average length of time I think is like 2 to 3 years. Women don’t stay at the same place though, they move around.
TD: What is your opinion of the men
who are your customers?
M: They want a sexual experience
they can’t get from their wives or their
girlfriends, simple really. I have no
special opinion of them.
TD: Do you think the men who come
to Health Clubs are cheating on their
partners?
M: I don’t think it’s cheating, I think it’s a way these men can enjoy their lives.
TD: If you were married and discovered your husband had been going to a place like where you work, how do you think you would feel?
M: I would be okay with it, but really, I wouldn’t want to know about it, it’s his business what he is doing, I don’t want to know.
TD: If you were the boss of one of these establishments, what would be different?
M: I would be more caring to the girls.
Many of the women working in this
industry have lots of problems personally
and at the job. I would listen to the girls
more and talk to them and care for them.
The bosses insist we work even when we
are menstruating, so, I would care more
about the girls.
TD: Foreigners are not allowed at 98
percent of these places, why is that?

M: Communication is difficult. Words
and gestures aren’t the same. Plus,
foreigners have more disease than
Japanese, Japanese think foreign women
have many sexually transmitted diseases,
so naturally, foreign men do too.
TD: Really? Wow. Would you let
foreigners come in if you were boss?
M: Maybe, it depends on what he looks
like, if he can speak any Japanese..
TD: Would you let me in?…nevermind..
how many customers do you see in any
average day?
M: 3 or 4, the most was 14 in one day.
TD: Wow. That beats my one day record
by about 13, no, 12, no, 11, well, no,
she didn’t count, so 12. Wow. 14. You
must have felt really tired.
M: Yes, it was a long day.
TD: What was the strangest request you
ever received?
received?
M: A man brought rope and tied me up,
it was fun for him but not for me, another
customer asked me to punch him in his
stomach as hard as I could…he almost
vomited but that’s what he liked, that al-
most-vomiting feeling.
TD: Yeah, I used to like that too, but I sorta grew out of it.
Last question, do you have any coupons
or anything, I mean like a free pass, or
is there like a back door or something…
M: (Nervous laughter, followed by
nervous silence.) No, I don’t.
TD: Anything else you’d like to add? ( A
little pissed.)
M: I am not ashamed of my work. I think
it is important to keep sexual desire in
order to feel alive and vigorous. My
older customers are very “genki” and
alive and it is because they have kept
their sexual desire.
TD: Thank you for your time, can I eat
your french fries?
M: I gotta go..
..and then, just like that, she got up
and bounced off, leaving me and my
translator eating cold fries and feeling….
frisky.

Posted via email from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

Matteo Giachetti

2010-01-07T02:24:00.001+09:00

By Nuova Erudita

Artworks by Matteo Giachetti

Matteo Giachetti is a photographer, who uses pictures to create his own personal universe of people, events and places. He proceeds as an author behaves with any story and he uses, with extreme boldness, the traditional ingredients of the painting which has an ancient mediterranean root. He could be compared to an old fresconist painter, who compose spectacular

sceneries in which the bible stories are conveyed to the audience.

But his visionary form is often pervading by the urban and post modern culture because he is mainly a photographer who starts to tell his stories from reality surrounding himself. He is an artist fascinated by the anecdotal datum hidden in the daily nature. The Giachetti’s narration does not need magnificent subjects or extraordinary events to construct its epic; he looks through the things as a dreamer and every things could become spectacular, depending only by his own feeling.

In the “Multilayers” artwork all the memories are still superimposed: lights, shapes, colors and signs are going through several steps to express an emotional experience of the world, where every pieces become the author’s intention to built the story. It is like a free jazz concert, where the possibility of narration seems endless and unforeseeable.

So what does he want to tell us? Maybe an aspect of a story, that you can remember or that you do not know, but Matteo Giachetti makes you an imagine and sows it inside your soul.

Akamon Night View;

Who is that man?;

Adrift;

Osukannon;

The Spirit of Shibuya

Posted via email from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

Curtain Call: an Interview with Michael Walker

2010-01-06T03:34:00.001+09:00

By Achim Runnebaum

Friday night in a smoky Karaoke Bar in Imaike. Usually bad singing and Karaoke go hand in hand, which is why all ears perked up when Mike grabbed the microphone and the whole place erupted with incredible sound. Nobody would have expected him to be able to capture people's attention like that, but that's Mike....... a multitalented, complex individual who has become a regular contributor to the Nagoya Art Scene with his plays.

"Aren't you the guy from the Nagoya Players?" That's the question Mike gets all the time, and even though he's worked with the Nagoya Players before, Mike has established himself as an independent director, actor, and all around Theater Guru in Nagoya in the last couple of years. He's formed his own Company, Maidenagoya and keeps putting out very interesting and thought provoking plays... We caught up with Michael in Sakae and sat down to get the whole story of his successful Theater career.

RAN: Tell me how the whole acting/directing thing got started for you.

Michael: I grew up in a small town south of Sydney and was into all kinds of sports, especially cricket. When I was 21, I was living in London to play cricket, and had the chance to meet a friend in Edinburgh. As fate would have it, the biggest arts festival in the world was held at that time. During my stay there, I was offered a job and ended up staying there for a while. I worked in a youth hostel and got to meet all kinds of incredible people from all over the world. Through working at the Hostel and being involved in their activities, I got bitten by the acting bug and knew that's what I wanted to do in my life. After a year, I came back to Australia, gave up cricket completely, and wanted to become an actor, so I started acting school.

RAN: It's interesting how one little trip can change your life. Who were some of your first acting idols:

Michael: Oh, you know, the Ratt Pack: Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, Demi Moore, and all the famous actors from the 80's.

RAN: What was the next step after acting school for you?

Michael: After 3 years of acting school, I worked little odd jobs here and there just trying to get experience. I did commercials, and even one feature film. It was very low budget and shot in only 16 days, but it got a nomination from the AFI (Australian Film Association) and was relatively successful. It was called Occasional Coarse Language. Through that movie, I got to meet Kylie Minogue, who came out for support, and the Australian Band called "Living End" played at the opening, so it was a great experience overall.

RAN: Getting to meet Kylie is always a great experience, I can imagine. Speaking of the beauty of Australia, why did you give up the wonderful beaches of Australia for the concrete jungle of Nagoya?

Michael: (hahah) Well, I ended up in debt over a short film, and had to pay the money, so in desperation I looked through the paper one day and saw an ad for working in Japan. Initially I wanted to come for only one year, make some money, pay for the film and then go back to Australia... That was about 10 years ago..

RAN: So much for that one year.

Michael: yeah I met a girl here, we had a baby girl together and of course the original plan changed completely after that.

RAN: You've made quite a name for yourself here in Nagoya though. What are your thoughts about the art scene in our beloved city?

Michael: Nagoya's artistic community is still very small, so People who do things become known rather quickly here. There's still a lot of room for new talent.

RAN: In your opinion, how has the art scene changed in Nagoya since you came here?

The art scene in Nagoya has changed a lot recently. There are more and more small bands popping up all over the place, and a lot of people doing their own thing, which is very good, I think....

RAN: Speaking of doing your own thing, how did you get started with your own theater company?

Michael: I did a couple of shows with The Nagoya Players and directed a couple of plays for them, which was a great experience. However, I really liked the smaller, non-rigid independent theater productions like back home, where theatre is so much more diverse with little pockets of theater in bars or small venues, which is a fantastic way of seeing a show, I think, so wanted to try something different. At first it was just going to be one play, Death and the Maiden. We got this little place in Ikeshita called Theater moon, and we worked with just a skeleton crew of about 7 people. At that time we didn't even have a name yet. The play went reasonably well, and people encouraged us we should continue to do theather. Sometime after that, a friend gave me a play called "Bent", which I had never heard of before. I read it and was enthralled by its power, its humor and its subject matter, which was just unbelievable. I had no idea if and how I could do it, but I had to try.

side note: it was during the preparatory stage of that play that I'd first met Michael since he asked me to train his actors in using a German accent for the play.

During the preparations for Bent, we realized we needed a name for our company. After a little thinking, we decided on "Maidenagoya", because Maiden was our first play, and if you say it fast, it sounds like "Made in Nagoya"...

RAN: Oh yeah, I never thought of that before. Nice play on words. Now, your next play is coming up soon, right?

Michael: Yes, our 5th play is coming in November. After Romeo and Juliet, which was just so huge.....we took it over to Tokyo, and there were about 50 people working on that play, so I wanted to do something a bit smaller scale again, and we did a small dinner theater show at Red Rock Bar. So for this next play I wanted to do something a bit bigger again. It's called Cosi, which is actually short for Cosi fan tutte. It's an Opera originally by Mozart. The play is the first Australian play in Nagoya. It's a comedy, which is another first for me.

RAN: Can you tell me a little about the story without giving away too much of the plotline?

Michael: It's about a young guy who agrees to direct patients in a mental institution. The Play is set in 1971, so the context is the Vietnam war. He took the job just to make some money.

RAN: Sounds familiar. I think many people here in Nagoya can relate to that, right Mike?

Michael: (laughs) I certainly know what that's like. After all, that's why I first came to Japan. Anyway, his goal is to try and get the patients to come out of their comfort zone a bit. So he wants to do some kind of theater with them. Of course one of the patients suggest they do this opera. None of the patients can sing, or even speak Italian, so the play follows them as they try to put this opera together. It's a comedy, but it also explores human themes such as identity, belonging in the world, relationships, trust, etc. It has many different layers to it, which is what I like.

RAN: Very cool! Looking forward to that. Now, you've acted internationally in England, Australia, and in Japan. How do you think the audience is different in Japan?

Michael: That's a good question... I think audiences here fall into 2 categories: 1) the kinds of people we bring along, such as students, friends, etc. who are quite supportive, and then 2) the other group are more interested in English or foreign theater. When the audience is predominantly filled with people whose English is not so strong, it can be a bit difficult. I've never used subtitles in my plays because I think it takes away from the whole experience, so for them it can be a bit challenging at times, but I hope they still have a good time in the end. Also, in Japan it's a bit more difficult to read an audience. When you're an actor on stage and you get that energy from the audience it's one of the best feelings for us and when you don't get that emotion from them, you start to wonder if you're doing something wrong.... Here in Japan it's a bit more difficult to read an audience as a performer. You can't interpret things the same way as you would back home.

RAN: I can imagine it must be quite difficult to really convey the various types of emotions in plays. Where do you find your inspiration as a director and actor?

Michael: Honestly, I find it in the people I work with. It's an amazing experience to have these creative people around who have their own view of the world, which you couldn't possibly have come up with on your own. Also I draw a lot of inspiration from my life, so if there's a difficult issue or something very good happens to me, I tend to use that as a base from which to perform from or direct from.

RAN: Ok last question. You've been in Japan on and off for about 10 years now. Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?

Michael: Mhmmm, I ask myself that question all the time....I love Japan and I have a daughter here,but I would hope that in 10 years time I've moved on and living in a place where I can do this full time and have that connection with other people who also see this as their sole livelihood, so I think it would be great to have that connection in a professional environment. Where that is, whether it's in Australia or in England I don't know yet.

RAN: Great! Maybe we'll see your name on Broadway or in London sometime in the near future. Anything you'd like to add?

Michael: I think that what you guys are doing with the magazine, creating your own thing is great; you guys kicked ass with the first issue and I hope you're gonna keep going with it.

RAN: (Laughs) We will, and thank you for the interview. (Damn right we will! --Ed.)

Michael:No worries, I'm glad I was a part of it. Thank you very much.

Although Mike's last bit of thesbian joy, Cosi, is over, you can check out what the Maiden Nagoya folks have in store by visiting their website at www.maidenagoya.com.

Posted via email from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

Gazing and Craving

2010-01-06T02:13:00.002+09:00

words and pictures by Larry Defelippi

In Céline’s ‘Voyage au bout de la nuit’, the main protagonist doubts there exists any genuine realizations of our deepest character except war and illness. I submit a third. Sexual desire. We all have an appetite for seeing-- the Lacanian ‘Appétit de l´oeil’.
I’m struck by the darker side of desire, gazing and craving and it’s consequences. This is what I’m currently engaged in. These images come from two works.

The first, ‘Heterotopia By The Hour’ investigates the Foucauldian space and sexual behaviour. Spaces that have more layers of meaning or relationships to other places than immediately meet the eye. Spaces both real and imagined, some of which seem to possess pure and simple openings, but generally hide curious exclusions. This can be evidenced in the proliferate ‘love hotels’ of Japan. A place where sex is kept isolated, sheltered and hidden. The subject of a young woman wearing a ‘seifuku’, or sailor uniform in one of these indeterminate spaces is representative of ‘The girl fetish’ that predominates Japanese culture.

The second, an exploration of the gaze and the female body in Pink Eiga. A fusion of sex, revenge and violence. Not the willing female body of the stereotypical Western adult movie, but a more intellectual, sinister and sadomasochistic representation of the female body. The repressed and the violated. A respite from the cult of ‘kawaii’. Note the absence of flirtatious fourth looks constituting an imagined participation from the viewer. In it’s place lies a cool gaze; vengeance embraced and all inclinations towards submissiveness discarded like a blood soaked rag...

Posted via email from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

Up In Smoke

2010-01-05T16:30:00.002+09:00

You see them everywhere in Japan- In restaurants, in bars, on the street, and even on top of Mt. Fuji. No, I’m not talking about beautiful Japanese women wearing high heels; I’m talking about smokers. Japan is a smoker’s heaven and a non-smoker’s hell. Whereas in most other developed countries around the world, smoking has been banned in all public places, especially in restaurants, it seems that in Japan it’s still as much part of the culture as sushi and manga. It’s actually so socially accepted in Japan that nobody (it seems) thinks twice about the impact it has on their lives and those around them.

Please note that I’m not trying to stop you from smoking or tell you that it’s bad for you - you know that already. These are some facts that no matter which way you slice them, they are still true. I know most smokers think that either they can stop before they get cancer or that somehow miraculously they will be spared the horrors of having to live with cancer; not to mention the harm they cause to others. It really boggles my mind that a smoker asked me if it was OK to light up right next to me, and seemed shocked when I replied with “Is it OK to fart in your face?” Seriously, what’s the difference? Oh yeah, passing gas doesn’t release nearly as many harmful chemicals... Even if smokers don’t want to acknowledge the negative effects they know these facts in the back of their minds but perhaps feel it is impossible to change. It is this suppression and denial of the truth that keeps most people smoking. Well, if you must smoke then here are the true unchangeable facts about smoking and how it affects the environment you should know:

It takes approximately 12 years for a cigarette butt to disintegrate, releasing harmful chemicals into the ground. They are not (as so many people falsely believe) biodegradable. The filters are made of a type of acetate that never fully breaks down.
Smoking contributes to global warming by releasing 22 million net tons of CO2 in the atmosphere directly and indirectly through the tobacco manufacturing process. 600 million trees are felled and burned annually to dry and cure tobacco leaves.
If you continue to smoke, there’s a very high probability that you will die from a smoking-related illness.
Smoking causes premature aging of the skin, particularly in women, and has been linked to a decreased sperm count in men.

So the question then becomes, why do people choose to be slaves to their own addiction? When asked “Why do you smoke?” some common answers are “because it’s cool” (so that means that the old guy sitting by himself in a bar smoking up a storm and coughing his lungs out is cool?) “It relieves stress” (so does chewing gum by releasing a chemical which relaxes your body. It is also much healthier for you, those around you, the environment, and not to mention your teeth),
“I just can’t stop” (it’s all about mental strength; are you admitting you’re a mental wimp?), Everybody is doing it, and it’s the cool thing to do (with the widespread use of tobacco nowadays, wouldn’t it be cooler to really do something unique instead of just being a follower?) “all my friends are doing it and they won’t accept me if I don’t smoke” (This excuse hasn’t worked since Kindergarten. You’re an adult now, you can make your own decisions; you gonna let your friends live your life for you?)

The problem is fear and not thinking about your actions and taking responsibility not only for your own life, but also for the lives of people around you. It’s easy to make excuses; anybody can do that. That’s right, the fear of change, of doing something new is greater than the instinct for survival and preservation. Now, some of you might immediately argue that certain smokers have enjoyed a long, fulfilled life. While that may or may not be true, take the number of people who were, or still are affected either directly or indirectly by the effects of smoking and compare. I think you’ll soon see the staggering difference in number.

If all this factual information has made you think and maybe you’re considering quitting, then you’ll face one of the toughest challenges in your life - quitting for good. Here’s some food for thought: While it’s easy to give up (quitting) and fall back on old habits, there are also many negative feelings that accompany such a fallback. The feeling of failure, or the feeling of not being able to follow through on your plans (to quit). Personally, I think the benefits of quitting and knowing that you really made it, far outweigh the feelings you get when you smoke. So to help you, here are some websites with more information about smoking and how to quit.

General Information: http://www.ashtraybreath.com/why-do-people-smoke-cigarettes
Statistics: http://www.ashtraybreath.com/overall-stats-and-youth-smoking-facts
Quitting: http://whyquit.com/

If you continue to smoke and think all this is just a bunch of hogwash, just ask yourself this question: How is smoking improving your life and the lives of those around you? Write down some positive and negative points (be brutally honest). If the negatives outweigh the positives, then be strong, face up, and vow to make a change in yourself for the better. With the new year coming up, this is as good a time as any to make a change for the better in the coming year....

Gaijin★Superstar

2010-01-05T15:27:00.003+09:00

We, the staff of RAN Magazine, in order to form a more perfect ex-pat community, do humbly take up the burden of airing out both yours and our DIRTY LAUNDRY, in our own rag no less. We'd like to think we all are thinking like this, about our lives in Japan, our existence in a society that is in most ways a total 180º from the societies and cultures we were raised in. So what is it about this exotic place that beckoned to us in the first place? And once here in the bosom of Lady Japan, did the wild romp in the hay turn to wedded bliss or did she decide we were more trouble than we're worth and turn us out into some back alley... Or maybe WE are the ones that eventually grow tired of her quirks, and in finally acknowledging them, are looking for an exit faster than Neo did in the Matrix. Hmmm... We wanted to interview random passers-by but you guys turned out to be a bunch of chicken-hearts so we decided to turn the gun on ourselves for a change....

Trevor: What is your reason for being in Japan?

Achim: I came over because I was really interested in the Japanese culture. Then I went to bed one day and I woke up about four years later and I am still here.

Adrien: Well basically I met my wife in America, and that is more or less the end of the story. And I also always wanted to learn another language, and I've always been interested in Japanese, so that's it.

Adam: I got married in America, and when my wife got pregnant and wanted to have a baby, we came out here to have the baby close to her family and I haven't found a good enough reason to go home yet.

Jason: Escape is part of it. I've always been interested in Japanese culture and as a kid, when we moved to Los Angeles, it was my form of escaping family problems and escaping teenage angst in general, throwing all of my concentration into this completely different culture that was so very opposite to my kind of ghetto-fabulous, West Coast, Los Angeles upbringing. I just knew I wanted to try living in Japan, because I associated, everything that was happy and nice, rainbows and ponies, with being over here.

Trevor: I came over here because I was looking for a job. I found a job teaching English in a newspaper in LA, applied for the job, got the job and I was on an airplane a month later. No special interest in Japan, didn't know a damn thing about it.

Trevor: What do you think are the best characteristics of living in Japan or Nagoya.

Achim: Safety. I think Japan is still one of those countries where you can go shopping, and you can leave your groceries on your bike and go into a store and when you come out of that store they're still gonna' be on your bike.

Jason: Where do you live? Once when I lived in Osaka, my buddy went into a Family Mart for about twenty seconds, just long enough to buy an onigiri or something. And we had gone used CD shopping earlier... When we came out the bike was still there, even the plastic bag was there, but the CDs were gone. G-A-W-N.

Achim: I've never heard anything like that in Nagoya

Adrien: One time I had my french toast stolen out of my bike.

Achim: I guess they were hungry.

Adrien: I was biking around and I had a bite of some crappy french toast, and I left it in my basket. When I came back it was gone.

Adam: I had my dignity stolen once.

Jason: You didn't have any dignity to take.

Achim: The other thing I like about Japan is that at least on the surface, people here still really respect each other. I mean in the sense that the customer service is unmatched in the world.

Trevor: I completely disagree. I think the customer service here sort of sucks. I mean after we order our food here, count how many times she comes over and asks us if everything is okay. That is part of customer service?

Adam: That might be cultural though.

Trevor. But that's what we are talking about, culture.

Adrien: In my area [in America] if you go to a grocery store, they treat you like a pariah at the counter, if they even make eye contact you're impressed. But here they at least say something. My convenience store they are always smiling and bubbly, even if its three o'clock at night. Its like “irashaimase!”

Jason: I have to agree with the customer service thing, that impressed me. In the States you go to McDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken and they might run out of hamburgers or chicken. Its happened to me many times. It's on the menu and I say “yes, I'd like a quarter pounder with cheese,” and they say “well, we don't have any quarter pounders.” “Okay, well can I just get a double cheeseburger?” and they are like “well we don't do that either.” and its like, "well why is it on the damn menu?"

Trevor: That's in the states?

Jason: That's in the states.

Trevor: Y'all are living in different states. That has never, ever happened to me, but it happens constantly to me here. Convenience stores, restaurants, McDonald's, I have never been to any place in America where they ran out of anything.

Jason: You've never been to Popeye's Chicken where they were like “I'm sorry, we don't have anymore chicken.”?

Trevor: No dude. What?! What are you talking about? *truth is, I never ate Popeye's much back home --pub. *that's 'cause you ain't really black.--ed.

Jason: Wow.....Just wow!

Adrien: I was realizing something the other day when I was in the convenience store. I'm always super nice to the folks, you know I try to talk to them, but no one will ever talk to you in a convenience store.

Adam: They keep an appearance of having good service and stuff but they don't actually, probably give a shit.

Trevor: I don't think its good service at all

Achim: I disagree with that

Adrien: No one is ever genuinely nice

Achim: I think they are if you get to know them. If you go to the same convenience store over and over again they are super nice.

Trevor: Do you guys think its easy to assimilate in Japan?

Adam: I think its impossible.

Jason: It's totally impossible.

Achim: You can become comfortable in the culture, but you will never be accepted as a complete equal.

Adam: You will always be considered a foreigner. There are good and bad aspects to being a foreigner but that will never go away.

Trevor: What's different about Nagoya now than when you first arrived here?

Achim: Before the Expo you would walk down the street in Sakae and maybe once a week you would see another foreigner like yourself. Now you walk down the street and everyday you see ten or twenty.

Trevor: What do you think is accountable for so many more foreigners coming to Nagoya?

Achim: I think specifically Nagoya was exposed to the international scene more after the expo.

Adrien: Another thing about Nagoya is that the center of Toyota's international business is now Midland Square.

Trevor: If you had to say Nagoya has a certain characteristic, for example Tokyo is cosmopolitan, busy, crowded, what adjectives would you use to describe Nagoya?

Adam: I think Nagoya is like that youth pastor that everyone knew that tried to act really cool and hip, but actually had really old conservative ideas in his head.

Jason: I think so too.

Adrien: If I were to use an analogy I might say rusty gears. They move slowly.

Jason: I would say 'perpetrator-ville.' or 'faker-ton' or 'pseudo-town.'

Trevor: Nobody said anything positive. What makes you stay?

Jason: It's where my job is.

Adam: Actually I really like Nagoya.

Achim: I think Nagoya is one of the easiest places for foreigners to live. Its not too big, its not to small, its centrally located

Adam: Nagoya is calm compared to other places.

Jason: Well I have had the experience of living in both Tokyo and Osaka, and now Nagoya. I will say Nagoya is certainly the easiest city to live in in terms of getting around and saving money. When you live in a metropolis like Tokyo, you may get lost in the shuffle. You spend a lot of time and money just trying to go from one place to the next. Here in Nagoya, its big enough so that it is more than just a bump in the road for concerts to stop at. Secondly, there are actually enough gaijin here doing something to make a difference and have an active nightlife or put some cultural diversity on the map. And third, if you get pissed-off, you can jump on the train and be in either Tokyo or Osaka in two or three hours.

Trevor: What would you consider to be the pinnacle of your success here in Japan?

Everyone: RAN Magazine.

Trevor: What would you like to see RAN develop into?

Achim: Its a positive force to try and bring the art community in Nagoya together.

Adam: I want it to be something that gets people's asses in gear, I want RAN Magazine to be the magazine that makes people realize that there are things to do in this city other than just going to The Hub every fucking weekend. We all have different skills, almost nobody who is in Japan decided “I want to come here and be an English teacher.” You know we all trained in school to do something different. I want us to find ways to use our skills and abilities and things we like to do, and not be pigeon-holed.

Adrien: RAN needs to send the message that you can be a foreigner in this country and not just a teacher.

Adam: There is a glass ceiling here that we don't have to obey. We can create opportunities for ourselves. Nagoya is knowable and its doable. If you say “yeah I know Tokyo,” that's like saying “yeah I know the internet.” There is too much to process. But with Nagoya, you can carve a niche for yourself and say this is where I belong and this is what I do.

Trevor: Where do you see Nagoya in five years? Ten years from now?

Jason: I've only been here [in Nagoya] for one year, but I have seen Nagoya seem to struggle to be bigger than it is. Its gonna take change on both sides. I see the universities for example, trying to get their stuff in gear. Aichi University and Meijo University have their international programs, and I also see the companies that are based here like Toyota, even some of the smaller companies are trying to put some diversity and international programs on the list. What's gonna have to change is the random, everyday, Nagoya person that was born here and lives somewhere like Midori-ku and rarely sees anybody foreign.

Achim: If you take Nagoya four years ago and compare it to Nagoya now, you see more change.

Trevor: What does the term Gaijin Superstar mean to you? Does it sound positive or negative?

Adam: It doesn't sound positive to me. I think of somebody like Mr. Big or something like that. I think of somebody who made it here and didn't make it at home.

Achim: I think gaijin superstar to me has a positive meaning. A Gaijin Superstar is somebody who comes over here, who creates a niche for themselves and who does what they do without making apologies, without trying to fit in. I mean they fit-in enough that they don't offend anybody or anything like that, but the point where they are comfortable with who they are living in this place.

Jason: When we first brought-up the title gaijin superstar the first image that popped into my mind was Jero. This is somebody who came over here, and obviously he wanted to sing ever since he was a kid and he decided, “my grandmother taught me these enka songs, I am gonna see if I can do that over in Japan.” and maybe it was a novelty at first but now he's respected.

Adrien: I gotta tell you something that occurred to me. I came to Japan and I started learning the language and I thought I should adapt to the ideas and to the way people understand things, and after a while I found, using the language is fine but I found these cultural, social hindrances that they have themselves locked-into. I found it so oppressive, so one day I just said “fuck it. I'm American, I'm just gonna be American, but I will use the language. Even in the language though, there are little things meant to tie you in and lock you down.

Achim: I would say Japanese society is very compartmentalized even in it's language. The first part to learning a culture is learning their language because the very mechanics of that language were forged by the social issues of that time while that culture was being born.

Adam: Modern Japan is a really new country.

Trevor: Would you say Japan is experiencing a kind of identity crisis?

Adam: They were in isolation for hundreds of years, and even now it's slow going.

Trevor: Would you say there are any countries that have an easier time assimilating to Japanese culture?

Achim: Being German I have to say, I know the cultures are very similar as far as punctuality is concerned, and they way they think about things.

Trevor: I am still having a really hard time acclimating myself to Japanese culture. Coming from New York City with the ridiculous diversity there and everyone screaming at the top of their lungs to make their place in the world. You know, it's a stifling society and some people don't want to be stifled forever and I am one of those people.

Adam: But Japan is safe, and the fact that Japan is safe has absolutely nothing to do police, or the legal system. It has to do with that whole mentality of never going against the flow. There are no rubbish bins on the street but there is also no litter on the street, for example.

Trevor: The stuff that I don't dig is the stuff that on a broader basis is what keeps us here.

Jason: What do you think you should work on to make life easier in Japan?

Achim: Learn the language.

Trevor: I am still learning and trying my best to be more Japanese I guess. One of the reasons I got divorced is because I was so tied to the person that New York city created, that my wife didn't want to fuck with that dude after a while. Learning the language is more mechanical, but the other stuff is more internal, spiritual and psychological, and that is what I am trying to do.

Achim: That is one of the great points about living here is you can really find out who you are inside.

Jason: You know, this is the part of the world where I found out exactly who I really am. Some people get here and right away they are like, “aww man, 'F' this place.” but I was the exact opposite. People kept telling me, “you're just in your honeymoon period. After about two or three months you're gonna crash.” It took me like two years to crash, and the thing that finally made me crash was something so simple. It was the fact that I couldn't get any Taco Bell. I walked into a place that had tacos and there was mayonnaise on my taco, and I lost it. Don't get so ingrained in this culture that you forget what it is that you liked about your own culture and always have something that you can take with you that's a little bit of home.

Achim: I think my advice for somebody coming over here is don't get trapped into the negativity. Go out of your comfort zone and really try to explore the country, explore the people and really try to find yourself and your own opinions instead of having those opinions forced on you by others.

Jason: You are here to get away from whatever kept you complacent at home right? You've got this explorer mentality and the explorer's life is tough. You're over here so you need to toughen up a little bit.

Adam: It's really frustrating to hang-out with Japanese people who don't speak any English but that is the best thing you can do. You work with what you've got – you've got a little bit of Japanese, they have a little bit of English, you get drunk and start saying what you know how to say, and you start communicating as human to human without worrying about anything else.

Trevor: If you could go back in your history and do something differently since your arrival in Japan, what would you do differently?

Adam: I would have gone and checked out all the clubs and live houses I wanted to go to.

Trevor: I would go back and learn the language. I'd start learning the language upon first arrival, and I would travel more.

Achim: If you force yourself to step-out, on your day off or something, just force yourself to get on the train, it changes your whole perspective on Japan.

Jason: What I would do differently is not concentrate so much on the small stuff. I would like to just go back in time and tell myself to lighten-up.

Trevor: Do you think Nagoya is a romantic city?

Jason: Huh?!...No!

Achim: Not really. There are romantic places but you have to look hard to find them.

Adam: Every once in a while, and nobody knows why it happens, but every once in a while out of the blue, a scene occurs. Like a scene forms itself and nobody can explain it. It becomes a focal point, and for some reason everybody there just turns on, and connects to that even though nobody knows why. Potentially Nagoya could do that.

Achim: There is so much potential here.

Trevor: Abso-fucking-lutely.

Jason: Nagoya doesn't have any identity yet.

Adam: Nagoya hasn't been put on the map yet.

Trevor: There are so many people who can do so many diverse things who want something to happen.

Achim: I think that is our mission. We are at the forefront of Nagoya. I think we can really bring people together here and make them realize what you are talking about.

Adam: There is no formula, it's different every time. There is no saying who or what the catalyst will be, but it could be a magazine.

Jason: Just hyping it up, eh?

Trevor: Final comments?

Adam: Get off your ass Nagoya. Get off your ass and go out and do something cool.

Achim: Find your identity. Find out who you are and make your voice heard.

Jason: Don't hate, innovate. As far as RAN is concerned if you think you can do something better don't hate on it or us, but put out your own thing and make it better than us.

Trevor: Do something interesting and think "community."

Adrien: Don't be afraid to ask.

Jason: Use your own brain.

Achim: Stop separating and start uniting.

Jason: Everyone get in gear, get coordinated, lets synchronize our thoughts and our minds and lets go in the same direction.

Forward

2010-01-05T15:14:00.000+09:00

Romance and Diplomacy

Three issues in, and the seams are starting to show. People are getting ornery and deadlines are being missed, ignored, or openly ridiculed. Like any romantic relationship, ours has reached the critical six month mark, that moment where you’ve tried every sexual position there is more than a few times, talked until dawn about your dreams and your childhood and your dashed hopes and plans, you’ve even taken showers together and sadly it seems the infatuation is starting to wear off, and you’re realizing the other person isn’t some Gift from God with superpowers, he/she is just another flawed human with issues and baggage and emphatically NO, they’re not going to save you from yourself, that monumental task is still in your own hands.

Which is a good thing.

Who knows you better than you know yourself? That’s why I my part of the foreword the title “Romance and Diplomacy”, and yes it does have the slightest allusion to Prez Obama cruising through these parts recently to make sure the Japanese and Chinese still believe in The American Dream, even if no one in America believes in it anymore. Point being, you’ve got to sell yourself on some dream, romance, wealth, fame, beauty, importance, invention, immortality, a nice bowl of soup, Viagra, something has to get you out of your bed in the morning, and then it’s up to you to make it happen.

I’ve had this idea for a film in my head since I arrived here. It goes something like this; A frazzled and more-than-slightly bereft dude from Brooklyn with a shady background arrives in a medium-sized city in present-day Japan. He immediately falls in love with a beautiful and traditional Japanese girl whose family, naturally, doesn’t approve of the young couple’s budding Forbidden Romance. This is in no small part due to the Brooklyn dude’s non-Japanese-ness, as well as the pervading sense of conservative-ness and overall closed-mindedness of the local city they live in.

They go underground.

Their passion stirs up trouble in the community where they live, and an all out race war bubbles to the surface, throwing age-old prejudices out into the open. The young couple is torn apart in the ensuing chaos, and the Brooklyn dude spends lots of time in this old ramen restaurant wondering how to get, keep, and maintain The Women He Loves. Her friends and family, meanwhile, employ every tactic and means at their disposal to destroy and otherwise create mayhem for her, all the while trying to convince her that they are acting in her best interest. Yeah, right, so why doesn’t it feel that way? Innocence is lost.

Exactly like our fair city of Nagoya, the location of the film’s setting has an international cast of characters, Russians, Americans, Aussies, Brits, Brazilians, Africans, Persians, Phillipinos, etc. The gang’s all here..

At film’s end, everyone learns some kind of vague lesson about tolerance and acceptance and the importance of community and creativity and there’s even some silly “love conquers all” theme running throughout the story. J7 calls it “Romeo and Juliet meets Crash”, I can buy that, throw in a little “Lost In Translation” and maybe “The Wanderers” and that’s the flick. (I also call it "What if Beat Takeshi was American, But Still Made Yakuza Movies."--Ed.) Can’t divulge the ending but I swear, it’s coming soon to a theater near you, killer soundtrack and all. Submit songs if you have any.

Know any producers? Directors? Anyone with a camera? Let’s make this movie and we can all become famous millionaires and then we can buy a big house with a two-car garage out in Owariasahi and live happily ever after..

FutureTrippin'

Yo-- Did you also notice, its 20- TEN? No more sayin' "it's the year 2__K" or "two-thousand___ " for the year... Wow... Twenty-Ten... So where the hell are the flying cars, why can't I vacation on the moon, why isn't my best friend an alien from Jupiter... When can I hop aboard the Discovery and argue with HAL about opening the damn pod-bay doors, and when can I jump on a speeder bike on the third moon of Endor and party with those fuzzy, lovable Ewoks? Hell this is Japan, so I'd guess we're one step closer than the rest of the world in doing any of that... After all, they're goin' ahead with plans to build the Super-Shinkansen-- Nagoya to Tokyo in 1 hour flat. Coming in Twenty Twenty-Five or so...

Hell, ain't we supposed to be there already though? Where's the money for that supposed to come from, and wait... Can't we already get to Tokyo pretty fast on the regular Shink already? Why do we need to get to TOKYO that quick for anyway? I'd rather have Meitetsu build something where I can get to Utsumi in 15 minutes from Mei-eki during summertime... You would too if you saw some of the Goodness that is summer at Utsumi beach. What are they gonna do with the Tokaido Shinkansen when the Chuo Super-MagLev-Fast-O-Matic Shinkansen opens? Replace it with a moving sidewalk?

This is Japan... It's gonna get replaced with the transporter off the Enterprise from Star Trek.

Beam me the F up, Scottie, there's no sign of intelligent life 'round these parts...

In this issue, we’ve got Jap Cops, sex workers, insane people, a dude who lives in a Denny’s, RAN ZOO and Blanka (no-- not from StreetFighter).

What more do you want really? Romance? Diplomacy? (No! I want a damn speeder-bike!)

Welcome to Issue Number 3 of Ran Magazine.

Peace and Blessings.

tdh & jlg

Happy 2010! Issue Three is out!

2009-12-30T17:24:00.001+09:00

Our year end/year beginning issue is out in all the usual places. Please pick up a copy and read while ringing in the new year.

You can score a copy at:
Maruzen
Hub Sakae
Freebell
Shooters
Plastic Factory
Bintou Braids
Misfits
Deep Blue

And of course right here on the web!

Posted via email from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

RAN Magazine, Issue 3: Happy 2010!

2009-12-30T17:17:00.004+09:00

Merry Christmas from RAN!

2009-12-25T13:48:00.001+09:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS

皆にすてきなクリスマスを！

Today our gift to you is our new website-- www.ranmagazine.com

It still needs some work, for example if you're using chrome, or safari, there are some Java bugs. Such is life with computer software it seems. I'll be changing the code over time so it works in those browsers too, but for 97% of people in IE and Firefox, it works just fine.

You can use your Facebook, twitter, and Yahoo, and other logins to comment on any story and start a discussion. Also we'll be adding other features like discussion boards and a mobile friendly version of our site as well. So log on and check it out-- tell us what you think too in the comments section of this post as well.

So Happy Christmas, and Happy 2010!

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

Even "Famiri Maa" Tweets....

2009-12-24T05:40:00.001+09:00

So now Family Mart, a chain of Japanese convenience stores, has joined the latest internet/social media craze 140 characters at a time.

Whoever said the Japanese wouldn't embrace twitter never lived in Japan. Folks 'round here bang out text messages on phones faster than i type on a full keyboard! And you can say a lot more in Japanese with only 140 characters; Kanji remember? It's like Twitter was made for this place. So if you ain't tweetin' now, you're missing out on the good stuff... like those Bleach rings they tweeted about a few days ago... 店長「卍回！」(ten-cho [store manager], Ban-KAI!!) or something like that!

Posted via web from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

Get Out: Keta Shrine in Hakui, Ishikawa

2009-12-22T14:53:00.003+09:00

On December 31st every year there is a ceremony that takes place at a Shinto shrine called Keta Daisha in Hakui-city, Ishikawa prefecture here in Japan. The ceremony is for the purification of the miko (shrine maidens) that will be working there next year. If you're seeking the REAL Japan, then this maybe a trip for you to take. Here are a few pictures, videos and a map.

Via http://DannyChoo.com (which is why you see his drawings and doll at the end)

video courtesy Garakutaya

I haven't been there myself, but I've heard that it's supposedly the largest ceremony of it's kind; I may go next year if I don't go back home for winter holiday.
From Wikipedia:
Keta taisha(気多大社 - Keta Big shrine) is the head shrine of Noto district. The deity of this shrine is known as the god of love, and many young women come to wish for good love and marriage.
Dedicated to Oanamuji no mikoto(大己貴命).
Festivals of the shrine: U-matsuri, Hirakuni-matsuri.

View Larger Map
Official Keta Shrine website: http://keta.jp

Posted via email by J7

Let's Japaning

2009-12-16T14:15:00.001+09:00

...For your shell-shocked sex life, we present "Let's Japaning."

Posted via email from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

A Couple of Artists

2009-12-16T14:13:00.001+09:00

By TD Houchen

What do Brooklyn, New York and Wakayama, Japan have in common besides both being on planet Earth? Well, both locales spawned a pair of street artists who eventually met in Wakayama, and resettled in Nagoya to take their art styles into the world.

Posted via email from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

2009-12-16T14:10:00.002+09:00

By Achim Runnebaum

This is an ongoing look at the state of the environment both globally and locally. In every issue, we’ll take a look at some cold, hard facts, how people are afected by those facts, and what you can do to help the environment. This is a collaborative efort and we need your help now!

Posted via email from The Official RANmagazine LifeStream

RANmagazine

Untitled

OKTOBERFEST NAGOYA 2010!

NAGOYA OKTOBERFEST 2010

17 OF OKTOBER FROM 11:00 to 20:00

LIVE MUSIC – BEER – FOOD

!!! PRIZES !!!

LIVE MUSIC BY

TOMO SHAGGERMICHAEL WADE BANDBLANKAGHOST OF MATSUBARA

Don't Try This At Home (MANGA)

Teachers Do It on the Net

Nagoya Success Stories: The Sharp Shooter

French BBQ in The Park!

RAN Issue 7: Success Stories

ACCJ Chubu IBC presents: Web Marketing

The IBC is the Independent Business Committee for the American Chamber of Commerce Japan (ACCJ) If you own a web business and want to learn of ways of driving traffic to your site or you'd like to meet other local business people, I encourage you to attend.

Lucky 7

Kansai <-> Kanto for ¥5000?!

SISOSIG: YardWork

When In Rome: Opposite Attracts

Green Spot: Still Waters Run Deep

Nagoya's 20 Best Lunch Deals (courtesy NagoYahoo.com)

If you go for lunch in Subway or Starbucks you're probably going to end up paying close to 1000yen, so why not try a lunch time deal at some of Nagoya's top restaurants? Here are 20 of the best.

B.I.O. presents "The Art Of War" Live debut

Our website is a-changin'

Nagoya Live Houses

2010 World Cosplay Summit hits Nagoya!

OH SCHNAP!!! SCRIBD just featured RAN!

RANunplugged: Thank You!

One more time, with Charisma (via Japan Times)

BBB2010: Bus B GAWN!!

SummerInTheCity: RAN Issue 6 is ONLINE!!

RAN Unplugged

RAN Bang Bang Boogie Beach Party!

UPDATE!!

Nagoya → Beach Map

Itsuhata Beach Area Map

RANmagazine--Out on delivery

RAN Magazine Hot off the press! Sagawa Delivery to the rescue!

RAN Magazine Issue Five. Happy Golden Week!

Thank you Nagoya! We ROCKed THIS TOWN!! (UPDATED)

Thank you for coming out and supporting Haiti and RAN magazine.

UPDATE! We raised just over 60,000 yen towards HAITI and the EARTHQUAKE RELIEF FUND. This amount will be delivered to the JAPAN RED CROSS via the HARD ROCK CAFE sometime this week.

RANmag Issue Four hits the streets!

How to give aid to Haiti from Japan

ROCK THIS TOWN 2010 (update)

Nagoya Walk-a-Thon: Sunday, May 23, 2010

7-11 offering city services (via Japan Times)

Immigration, Healthcare and Your Employer

Rock This Town 2010. RAN/Rock/Relief: A concert to benefit Haiti 3/5/2010

I'm such a busy bee, editing @RANmagazine all day! Wait til issue 4 hits, along with a BIG event on March 5th...

RAN Lovers Anonymous

Haiti is in our ♥

Cure for the Mondays at Misfits

When In Rome: “The Pursuit Of Jappiness”

SEX WITH A STRANGER: INTERVIEW WITH A HEALTH CLUB WORKER

Matteo Giachetti

Curtain Call: an Interview with Michael Walker

Gazing and Craving

Up In Smoke

Gaijin★Superstar

Forward

Happy 2010! Issue Three is out!

RAN Magazine, Issue 3: Happy 2010!

Merry Christmas from RAN!

Even "Famiri Maa" Tweets....

Get Out: Keta Shrine in Hakui, Ishikawa

Let's Japaning

A Couple of Artists

Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

TOMO SHAGGER
MICHAEL WADE BAND
BLANKA
GHOST OF MATSUBARA