Inkfetish in Japan: People and places »
So I’ve just got back from a 2 week holiday in Tokyo, a city I’ve wanted to visit since the age of 12! I spent the first half of the holiday on an organised Manga and Anime tour set up by London based agency ‘Japan Journies’ who did an amazing job of showing us around the cities hottest spots for Japanese pop culture, including a visit to the Ghibli museum and Toei animation studio (responsible for Dragon Ball Z among other classics). During the second week of my trip I concentrated on more personal endeavours such as meeting and interviewing ‘Urotsukidoji’ creator Toshio Maeda, hanging out with Japanese Electronic legend Coppe (and painting in her studio!) and even managing to meet Michael Arias, the director of my all time favourite animated movie ‘Tekkonkinkreet’. I even managed to scrape in a last minute painting opportunity on my final day in the city thanks to the extremely talented artist ‘Ima One’ and his friend ‘GKQ’.
I have predictably hundreds of photos from this trip and so I’ve tried to crop them into 2 separate blog posts, the city and people I met and a the documentation of my last day’s painting with accompanying video…enjoy…
I was staying in the heart of the city in an area called ‘Shinjuku’, a very cool place that I’d compare to Soho in London given its focus on porn and interesting characters.
I saw lots of the things I expected to see whilst out shopping…Hello Kitty, dubious porn and models galore…
…but these dolls came as a surprise…very creepy/cool(?) and crazy expensive….
One of the highlights of my trip was getting to meet manga artist Toshio Maeda, the man behind the infamous Urotsukidoji saga and pioneer of the ‘erotic horror’ manga genre from Japan. Toshio was kind enough to invite myself and British artist ‘Dr.Dog’ to his flat where we met his wife, had some dinner, talked and looked through a whole heap of his original artwork, some of which I HAD to end up purchasing…
I also managed to film and interview with Toshio that should will be up shortly. Anyone interested in contacting Toshio regarding exhibiting or sales enquiries can do so via his recently launched website.
Through my friend Aya, I was lucky enough to hang out with legendary Tokyo based music producer Coppe’ who has the most amazing studio I’ve ever seen. The whole place is adorned with Disney goods, mostly Mickey Mouse related items…
As the night (and alcohol) progessed we decided it would be cool to paint on some of her walls. Given the fact that she’s a Mickey nut, I though it appropriate to drop the following…
