It's SO Cute!

I went to a little local festival yesterday, mainly because it also had a flea market. 

 

There were no fleas worth buying (all practical stuff like shoes and clothes, no toys to be found!) I ended up getting a pair of socks and some cans of fish (not sure which fish, but they were cheap).

 

Really crowded too and the only Halloween related table was this guy and his balloons.

 Outside, I found a vendor with some delish dishes; I had a chicken kebab.

 

I had missed the musical performance and there wasn't another for an hour, so I walked home. I stopped at a Department store and bought a cactus and some KitKats.

Then I spent several hours just milling about the apartment, I decided to rewatch a South Park episode because there was a topic I wanted to talk about. Labubus! There appears to be a Popmart (Somewhere? May be online only, click the link if you dare.) Prior to the SP episode, I had never heard of a Labubu, now I see them everywhere, but only behind glass, and not in their blind box packaging, and certainly not cheap. 

 

You can try and randomly win one in a lottery. Spend 1000 and you're guaranteed a key to a little locker with the prize inside. What you don't see are the 200 lockers behind this, thus your chances of winning are about 20:1.

 

Another option to get them is on the secondary market, in this Mercari.  Also not cheap.

 

 

I saw one in a UFO Catcher outside a music shop and tried my hand unsuccessfully. The claw tends to just pick it up enough to get your hopes up and then dash them. A little eight-year old boy was hoping to win and his grandfather dropped several coins in an attempt to so. (SO DID I!)

 

SPOILER ALERT for a month-old episode:

 

Anyway, back to the South Park episode. One girl is showing another girl her recent acquisition of a Labubu. (Serenity Labubu)

 

It's SO cute! The other girl showed off hers, (Loyalty Labubu).

 

 

It's SO CUTE! Yet, in order to show off, she brought out her big guns, (Chestnut Cocoa Labubu, super-rare). The first girl commented that it must be a knock-off and a brawl ensued, one wailing on the other until the school counsellor (piss off autocorrect, that's the Canadian spelling; as an aside, the counsellor is Jesus Christ) broke it up.

Later on, a gal named Red, manipulated Butters into buying her a super rare one for her birthday. She already has a few, but MUST HAVE the rare one,

and texted him the one she wants.

 

Butters goes to the Asian PopUp store (run by the guy who used to run the Chinese Wok place) and charges him 85$ for a blind-bagged one. The proprietor blames the TARIFFS as to the high prices. He got a common one. He leaves and comes back with another 85$ only to be told it now costs 125$ because the TARIFFS rose again. He had no choice than to try and win one in the crane game. 
Of course he did! (After innumerable tries.)

 

Red opens her gift and is shocked to see that she got the one she desired and offers to go upstairs with Butters. She then asks him to video film a ritual in which they call up demonic forces. (More than what Butters had in mind.)

 

 

It begins to rise up and metamorphose into a demonic version of itself.

Wow, Cool! and then a demon appears. (YOU can check out the episode for the rest.)

This is not just a funny little ribbing by a cartoon satire show, it has been happening in real life!

 

Hmm. Maybe I don't want to get one just for its novelty sake.

Okay, last night I was going to write the above when all of a sudden I got distracted by a John Carpenter movie I've never seen AND Halloween one after the other on my Twitch Channel. So I watched them and went to bed at 2:00 am.

The movie in question is a TV movie that came out right around the same time as Halloween. "Someone's Watching Me!"

 

Pretty good movie in the Stalker phones at midnight genre. While watching Halloween, I noticed that when babysitting, Jamie Lee Curtis and the kid were watching Howard Hawke's The Thing from Another World! Four years later, he directed the excellent remake. ('Yuusei kara no Buttai X' (遊星からの物体Ｘ in Japan.)

Here's another Oni. Datsueba lives on the banks of the Sanzu River and judges the gravity of the sins of the dead and steals their clothes? 

 

 

Here's a little video about her.

Kind of discourages you from going skinny dipping, eh?

Check out Cult of the Great Pumpkin  for more Halloween treats. Speaking of which...

 

That's it for now, I somehow managed to miss another days worth of blogging. I have some time off after tomorrow, maybe I can do some catching up.

 

 

 

Bird-Land.

Jazz Fest part 2. I had another wedding Sunday morning so I didn't arrive until 2ish and head straight for the flea market in Nishi Park. It was still very wet but I managed to get around without too much of a soaker.

 Mmm. Shinkansen beer.

A Capella gals in front of Parco.

One of the very few musicians I encountered along the way. I think they cut down on the amount of venues this year.

No those clouds don't look at all foreboding.

The swamp at the park.

I didn't see much worth buying at the Flea Market but I couldn't leave empty-handed so I got some Halloween goods.

 And a cheap jacket from my former drug dealer*.

*He used have a used goods shop downtown and I was a regular. Back when they were legal, I bought some Magic Mushrooms off of him.

The Rockers and Jeggae (Japanese Reggae) weren't bad but not overly impressive.

As I walked by, these two guys just wouldn't shut up, yapping away incessantly. Once they started playing, I wished they had continued talking.

I took refuge from the sudden downpour inside Mediateque and heard a guy singing standards in French.

I spent the next hour trying to track down a few friends to no avail, so I just sat on the rocks and listened to some Blues and let them find me.

I was ready to head home when I read that BIRD was singing today. I'd assumed it was a paid gig but it was free and so I trekked back to Nishi Park. I arrived just in time to hear her sing and thought she was amazing. Her English had really improved and sang some Jazzy ditties. Much to my embarrassment, I learned that the microscopic singer on stage was not she, rather it was Hiroko Williams. Still wonderful!

My new-found friends informed me of my error and we split a few brew and laughs.

Then the tiniest of Birds flew on the stage and warbled wonderfully.

I first saw her on late-night TV back when I lived in Tokyo over 14 years ago. Back then, she had this crazy Afro and I instantly became enamoured with her. Just to prove that I have indeed been listening to Bird, here are several of her cds that I've collected over the years (full disclosure: usually for 100-300 yen.)

A great way to end the Jazz Fest!!