All, Destinations
Joy, our young Beijing local, is no professional presenter, but stick her in front of a camera, she took to it like a Peking duck to water. Joy was a ball of delight and enthusiasm from the moment we met, whether cameras were rolling or not – a real natural. She said she took her energy from the brilliant blue sky and sunshine that greeted us that day, but we suspect her bounce is actually something that she carries inside, regardless of the weather.
Joy explained that as a designer, she’s been studying the ancient Chinese art of calligraphy for years, and was keen to demonstrate her skills. Before she could do that, however, we needed to get the gear, so our first stop was the Liulichang antiquarian district for an intriguing shopping safari through her favourite calligraphy supply stores.
Liulichang is a small neighbourhood just south of Tian An Men Square, and was previously a centre for glass production, supplying fine glass to the palaces of the Forbidden City. These days, the best part to visit is a strip of elaborate traditional-style buildings within a maze of hutongs (old-style neighbourhoods with claustrophobic alleyways) with a genuine lost-world charm. Beijing locals cycled by on rusty vintage bikes, cooked or played Xiangqi (Chinese chess) in the lanes as they have done for generations, and this made for some sumptuous shots.
‘There are four essential things you must have to do good calligraphy’ says Joy as she hunts for the perfect brush, some rice paper, a bottle of ink and a stone inkwell. With hot, dusty sunbeams streaming through the window of the century-old calligraphy store, we riffle through scrolls and compare wolf bristle to goat hair to sable.
Once Joy was satisfied with her purchases, we went to find a quiet place to spread out and start writing. We came across an old traditional tea house, where counters along both sides of the ground floor were thronged with people sniffing, selecting, measuring and mixing rich fragrant tea by the pound from huge glass pots that lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Upstairs, away from the bustle, we set up in a secluded corner beside the window and behind a bamboo screen.
A steaming pot arrived as Joy positioned the paper, brush, inkwell and ink. Ever keen to ensure we’re up to speed, she talked us through the intricacies of both tea drinking and calligraphy, and suddenly we’re transported back in time to ancient Beijing. We break the spell by pulling out digital cameras, a tripod and a mic, to jerk us back into 2014. Joy proceeds to skilfully demonstrate the elegant characters for Beijing, for Rat & Dragon, and for various other characters as we film.
In stark contrast, the next spot Joy wanted to show us was at the very forefront of modern Chinese contemporary art. In the outer suburbs of Beijing’s North East lies a steampunk-esque tangle of belching, churning smoke stacks, factories and electric plants. Towering chimneys reach into the sky and twisted, rusting networks of pipes snake through streets and lanes and alleys on groaning steel frames. It’s grey, urban-industrial, brick, steel and concrete.
As Joy led us deeper into the district, colours flared sporadically amid the bricks in the form of graffiti and posters. A small bronze sculpture of Vincent van Gogh hints at what lies ahead, but the next thing we saw blew our minds. Three red cages stacked one on another up to the height of the five story building beside them each contain a life-size bright red velociraptor. This is modern street sculpture on a monstrous scale. Further down the street, a steel lion with butterfly wings perches on a factory corner as an oversized child in horns looks down at two bikers as they rumble past on Harley Davidsons.
“This is the 978 Arts District” explains Joy, “The new centre of Chinese contemporary art. It’s crazy and amazing, and I don’t understand it, but I guess that’s the fun of what we call modern art.”
Fun and amazing it is. While smoke still billows from many of the chimneys, some of the factories have been converted to galleries, shops, biker bars and exhibition spaces and we enjoy the afternoon of filming, including an impromptu Kung Fu demonstration by Joys mate Woo Han which attracts quite a crowd, and then break for Beijing’s best coffee.
As night settles, Joy has one more local secret up her sleeve and takes us for a walk through student-oriented Nanlouguxiang. Back in the city centre, slightly north of the Forbidden City lay a couple of blocks of modern stores, bars and food places tucked into old hutong surrounds.
“This is where young Beijing people love to shop and people-watch. It’s also a great date spot for new couples” says Joy. Alleys lit with lanterns throb with energetic Beijing youth, out to shop for something funky. Indie fashion stores, bars and art boutiques all vie for attention here.
And finally, Joy insists that we must not leave Beijing without enjoying the all time classic Peking Duck. We settle into a restaurant and cause a bit of a fuss with the wait staff as we set cameras up on the duck trolley (great shots though) and finally wrap the day’s shooting with a cold Qingdao beer and one of the greatest meals of our lives.
Beijing is an incredible city, crammed with the old and the ultra modern. It’s busy, loud and boisterous. The Rat & Dragon crew has been enormously lucky to see the place through the bright, enthusiastic eyes of Joy, and if you visit we’d say this: Iconic sights are must-sees, that’s a given, but look beyond The Wall and dive into the local’s Beijing for it’s true flavour.
All, Inspire
We’re half way there!
Warning! Mathematicians, geophysicists and obsessive statistics fanatics, look away now. Avert your eyes from the guesstimations and suppositions that lay ahead. The rest of you, just bear in mind that a lot of the facts and statistics in this blog post are from our own subjective experiences on the road, or were pulled from various websites, chat rooms and your hairdresser’s cousin’s former cricket coach with absolutely no attempts to verify them. Simply enjoy the story…
Ever since leaving London, we’ve been chasing sunrises. East, east, east – Eastern Europe, across Russia and through Siberia – in fact, even when we ran out of land at Vladivostok, we took to the sea and continued on.
This means that we’ve actually been travelling faster than the Earth’s surface is spinning through space. Try it. Walk just a few paces to the east and you’ll be doing it too. Cool, huh?
Well we’ve been travelling a damn long way eastward, roughly between 45 and 55 degrees latitude, where the surface velocity of the Earth is about 1,200km/h, also in an easterly direction. That’s much faster than a cruising 747 (about 900km/h) but not as fast as a hoverboard hoax is revealed. As we’ve moved across the Eurasian supercontinent, it’s been fast enough and far enough for us to greet the sun slightly earlier each day, and so it set behind us a little earlier too. In short, our days got shorter.
This means we’ve lost time. We’ve crossed 11 time zones moving east, and so 11 hours of our lives have been sapped away by our journey. Which is a pity really, because we needed those. With so many blog posts to write, films to shoot and so much more of the world to explore, we really would have put those hours to good use.
All that has stopped now though. Japan was as far East as we’ve needed to go on our Epic Journey, and it’s been the longest period of time spent in just one time zone. It was nice. It was even long enough to get over our trainlag – which, by the way, does exists and can be just as bad as jetlag.
And now, for the very first time, we find ourselves heading directly west. We know it’s directly west because our ship, the Utopia, is sailing just about dead-on into the setting sun, and it’s damn well spectacular (we have a great time laps sequence of it).
We’re sailing from Shimonoseki on the western edge of Japan, across the East China Sea to Qingdao, home of China’s most famous beer, and it seems like a good time to sum up the Epic Journey so far, to take stock and to look ahead over a nice cup of tea.
Funnily enough, when we checked our proposed route against the mileage we’ve already done, we discovered that this new change of direction also signifies another major milestone of our trip. We’ve travelled, give or take, about 17,100 or so km over land and sea from Hyde Park in London, and our proposed route from there to Hyde Park Sydney will total roughly 34,400 km.
Somewhere between Japan and China, in the middle of the calm East China Sea under a sensational sunset, we reached the halfway point of our Epic Journey. Aaah…
And what a fantastic first half we’ve had. Seeing the world, catching up with old friends and making brand-new ones across the breadth of the planet, all while chasing down content to knock your socks off, has been utterly brilliant.
When you boil it down the goal of travel could be summed up by the feeling you get when you can genuinely say to yourself: “Wow, I’ve never seen/done anything like that before.” Travel makes this sensation possible, and the Rat & Dragon crew has been lucky enough to encounter this many times over so far. For a summary of the highlights and lowlights to date, see the graphic novel style illustration above, all are images from the Epic Journey.
And the best bit about all this? Well, we have plenty of adventure in store. It’s only halfway, after all…
All, Learn
Monkeys are pretty cool at the best of times, whilst being admittedly somewhat scary and crazy mini humans, their comedic value and intriguing intelligence (what’s going on behind those beady little eyes?) makes for at least plenty of entertainment.
Some of us may be well used to seeing pictures of friends and family on one of South East Asia’s popular monkey beaches, where tourists gather as part of a day trip stop off to in turn gawp and be gawped at our close relatives whilst trying hard to not have bikinis and board shorts accidentally ripped off by food searching primates.
Africa and South America also have their fair share of primate interaction – a cliché even leading to a near diplomatic incident between Brazil and the United States in 2002 – brought on by The Simpson’s depiction of monkeys in the streets of Rio de Janeiro (season 13, “Blame It on Lisa”). President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the Rio tourist board threatened to sue the producers for defamation of the city as ‘uncivilised’, but charges were dropped after producer James L. Brooks offered to have Homer fight the Brazilian president on Celebrity Boxing as a form of apology. We like this guy.
So we all know, monkeys = heat and jungle. Try this on for size: a fully-fledged outdoor monkey spa in the frozen snowy mountains of Japan?
Japan is famous for its love of natural hot springs, where the otherwise very private Japanese regularly take all their clothes off to soak collectively in pools of geo-thermally heated, mineral rich waters – all be it gender segregated (we’re not talking Germans here). The practice of going to the Onsen and spending hours in it repeatedly cleansing and soaking whilst warming your body to its core is understandably very popular – especially in said freezing parts of Japan where snow coverage racks up several meters at the side of pristinely cleared roads.
No surprise then that Japan’s Macaques (also known as ‘Snow Monkeys’ because they… well… like ice cream?…) have tagged onto the idea and spend the long snowy winter months with its usual -10 degrees temperatures in the mountains of Nagano Prefecture hanging out in Hell’s Valley – Jigokudani if you want to be all local insider-ish.
The steep valley formed by the Yokoyu river has an abundance of crevices that allow steam and boiling water to bubble up from the depths below which give this somewhat harsh environment its name – no Hells Angel’s hairy bikers here though, except on the occasional Tuesday. The monkeys roam the Joshinetsu Kogen National Park’s forests and seek shelter in them overnight, but if you would like to grab a glimpse of them during the winter day time, here is how it’s done.
From Nagano station, there are several options:
1) There is a one-day Japan Snow Monkey tour from Nagano, arranged by JTB, the rail network that also provides the highly recommendable JR Railpasses. See here for details.
2) There is an Express Bus run by Nagaden from Nagano Station’s East Exit to Kanbayashi (stop “Kanbayashi Onsen Guchi”), which is a little more expensive, but a straightforward way to get to the walking trail that leads up the mountain.
3) There is also the possibility of taking the train to Yudanaka (take the Nagano Dentetsu limited express train) which runs a more frequent service than the busses, however, you need to take a local bus from Yudanaka to the Kanbayashi trailhead (there are also mini shuttle bus services and of course taxis available at a higher price).
4) If you’re a bit minted or in a rush or lazy, you can taxi it all the way from Nagano station to Kanbayashi, where the driver will wait for an hour and take you back to Nagano after. Call 026-282-7777 for reservations.
Once you get to the beginning of the Kanbayashi trail, the real fun starts as you make your way on a tiny, very picturesque mountain trail through the woods (watch out for the occasional park keeper daring to ride this tiny trail on a moped to transport supplies from the village to the monkey park entrance hut). On the 30-minute walk up the valley, you can learn little bits and pieces about the monkeys and their natural habitat, whilst enjoying the beautiful setting and solitude of the forest.
Make sure to arrive well in time as the park closes at 5pm when the monkeys head up to the woods for the night. Leave enough time to not have to run up the hill and also to be able to get some good photo or nature spotting time with the monkeys at the spring. And remember, this is not a zoo, so whilst they are there most of the time, on certain days, the monkeys might not be bathing. We are told to avoid days that Man United games are on telly as the monkeys are rumoured to be fervent supporters.
Once you arrive at the guesthouse and human Onsen (interestingly situated DOWN stream from the monkeys – we’re sure they must have their own private spring), make your way to the right up the hill to the park entrance hut, pay your entry fee and walk the short 5 minute stretch across the bridge to the heart of the action – a 10m x 5m pool of hot steaming, monkey teabag smelling Onsen goodness.
For those of you who have watched the Daniel Craig narrated feature length version of Planet Earth “One Life” and marvelled at the wildlife photographer’s closeups of all sorts of incredible beings, including Snow Monkeys – now is your chance. You can step right up to the pool full of fuzzy spa goers, get your camera out right next to them and start snapping away. One word of warning – if you position yourself at the edge of the pool, beware that you will almost certainly have monkey butt thrust in your face at some stage when one of the teenagers starts to assert his imagined territory by walking all over your camera gripping hands.
Having said that, Jigokudani’s monkeys are relatively well behaved – undoubtedly due to the National Park’s highly disciplined keepers, who are very careful to avoid any suggestion of food from the tourists. Whereas monkeys in Thailand and Gibraltar will pounce on your backpack and tear your plastic bags apart in search of a cheeky snack, Japan’s politeness and strict rule abiding seems to have ensured that Jigokudani’s macaques have remained relatively unspoiled and still act very closely to their natural behaviour. Remember they are wild animals and work with the staff to keep it that way.
Japan’s natural beauty is staggering, and having been able to witness such a clash of concepts (jungle vs snow) and amazing creatures (nearly the northern most monkeys in the world with the northern most only 500km away on Honshu Island, Japan, which is a lot harder to get to) was a true privilege. Plus they are darn cute and hilarious. The ease of access to Joshinetsu Kogen National Park and yet lack of overcrowding makes for a truly magical experience we simply had to share with you.
Let us know if you make it to Jigokudani, we would love to see your pictures! Wanna see what it looks like in advance? Check out our Snow Monkey Spa Place Cake now:
All, Learn
Like a medieval battle re-enacted every five minutes, at a green signal, thousands of people charge at each other from 5 opposing curbsides across 10 traffic lanes. Somewhere near the middle, the multiple battlefronts collide, like storm swells on a harbour wall. You can almost hear the Samurai cries, the gnashing horses and clash of swords.
Ok, that last part isn’t true. Actually, the crests of unwaveringly polite people of Tokyo glide through each other smoothly with only the slightest of ripples through the crowd, until the last stragglers realise the imminent road danger and start to leg it to the other side before the eager traffic resumes.
With this many people though, you’ll certainly experience your share of craziness (check out our Crazy Tokyo blog post). And with sparklingly illuminated glass and steel canyons on all sides, purely nutty Tokyo fashion, TV screens the size of large buildings and some of the world’s most intense advertising in every direction, the world-class modern spectacle that is Shibuya’s pedestrian ‘scramble’ crossing will yield stunning imagery for filmmakers and photographers.
So what’s the best way to capture it all? The Rat & Dragon crew relished checking it out for our projects and here’s what we found:
Commercial Filming Permits
Permits are required for street shoots all throughout Tokyo, and from what we understand, it’s pretty much impossible to get one for Shibuya crossing. Rat & Dragon certainly don’t condone sidestepping regulations and wouldn’t dream of doing it ourselves. But if, hypothetically, we ever did consider it (which we didn’t), the following is merely what we might have hypothetically suggested (if we did condone it, which we don’t).
Shibuya crossing is one of the world’s greatest tourist marvels so just about everyone has a camera out. A tiny team of two or three people, without a tripod and obvious lighting or audio kit, will blend right in and will hardly be noticed at all, especially if using DSLR or similar light-weight, non-shoulder mounted camera. Similarly, if you’ve ever seen Tokyo fashion, you’ll know that getting your actor in just about any costume on the streets of Tokyo will probably not raise the kind of attention you would in other cities.
Where is it?
The crossing is just outside Shibuya Station’s Hachikō Exit. More people tend to cross from the station side of the road, and there are four other curbside points on the other sides of the crossing that pedestrians will line up at. Five roads lead into the crossing and the lights close about 10 lanes of traffic across all of them, each time the light changes. Pedestrians can cross to reach any of the other sides (hence the term ‘Scramble Crossing’), which makes for some brilliantly orchestrated chaos to fill your lens with.
Equipment
DSLRs are ideal, as are smaller consumer cameras with HD video capability. GoPro cams are perfectly suited to inconspicuous wide shots from right inside the action. A small steadycam rig for your DSLR is great to smooth out your POV shots as you walk the crossing, but remember: the name of the game is inconspicuous. A short pole for your GoPro is awesome for getting above (or below) the crowd.
For audio, if you need dialog or anything other than background atmos track, use a compact shoe-mounted mic and/or hidden lapel mic and pocket audio recorder combo. Don’t have your sound recordist get out a boom pole.
Ambient light is really good with so much advertising around, but it is also variable so a small LED light will pick out details if you need it. These can go unnoticed with so many people on their phones and tablets too. Alternatively, can you get away with your phone’s light?
Vantage Points
There are some great (and free!) places to view the crossing from afar and above.
Starbucks (1) shares a building with Tsutaya bookstore and has a massive upper-floor viewing window, where you can sip your frappe mocha latte sludge and watch the chaos. Stick it to the man by going in the bookshop door, completely bypassing the baristas, and up the escalators and into Starbucks’ upper floor without buying a bean. This is across the road from the station, so views the crossing looking back towards it. The station building isn’t the best backdrop, but it is a great spot from which to pick out details and individuals with a decent zoom, or the largest battlefront as pedestrians face towards you as they come from the station. The counter by the window shakes when other customers lean on or bump it, so for steady shots, use a tiny tripod or Gorilla Grip on the floor at your feet.
Shibuya Excel Hotel (2) is also across the road from the station and it’s the tallest building you can access at the crossing. Splash some cash and get a room for unparalleled access, or blag your way up in the lifts for a birds-eye view.
The pedestrian bridge between Shibuya Station and the Excel Hotel (3) also has a great free view. It’s a walkway on the upper floor above the road, and links the shopping areas of the station with the hotel (and more shopping). From the station, follow the signs up the stairs or escalator to the Excel Hotel. There’s a large window the whole length of the walkway and plenty of space to set up. A tripod will probably get challenged eventually, but there are plenty of windowsills and handrails for you to prop a camera on.
There’s also an elevated train (5) that runs over a rail bridge above one of the roads leading into the crossing. If you take a train on the Yamanote Line from Shibuya to Harajuku, you might get a fleeting glimpse from left windows (or from the right if approaching Shibuya from Harajuku). We didn’t try this, but if you have, please let us know how it went in the comments box below.
In Amongst It
Shots from within the crowd are awesome. Give your audience the feeling of being there. Get down to the street and run across it a few times. Wide-angle lenses allow you to cram more in to the frame – from the stripy asphalt to the beaming skyscrapers and everything in between – there’s just so much to see. If you do it a few times, you are certain to end up with some intriguing looking characters walking into frame.
There’s a small bronze statue of a group of toddlers (4) on a small, raised garden bed right near the curb on the station side. With good balance you can climb up a little for a slightly-above-head-height view, another great spot for a long lens for picking out details and individuals, but setting up a tripod probably wont work here.
The streets beyond the crossing are really cool too. It’s a youth oriented area packed with bars, clubs, restaurants and shops, where only the latest fashion is traded and inspired. People-watching here is off the scale for enjoyable and street photography is only difficult here because of the sheer volume of opportunity and range of choice of things to snap at. Shibuya is a street photographer’s dream, and definitely a place for the bucket list of places to shoot before you die.
Wanna see what it can look like? Check out our Shibuya Crossing Place Cake now:
All, Destinations
Ready, set, GO!
If you ever thought the cost of a Tokyo experience would pump up your blood pressure, a romp through the student district of Shimokitazawa will tickle you silly. Actor, Tokyo Local and all-round good guy, Go, took the pulse of this Rat & Dragon project and prescribed a jaunt through its buzzing narrow lanes for a dose of his favourite local secrets.
Live music venues and indie theatres share pavements with offbeat fashion stores and retro, pre-loved shops and hidden markets. While Harajuku might wear the pants in the Tokyo fashion scene, it also has the tourists, the gawkers and those simply riding the bandwagon.
Shimokitazawa, on the other hand, is grungy and authentic, fun and flippant, and best of all – damn cheap. You’ll bag a bargain on anything here, from crazy second-hand toys and junk to speciality foods and designer or vintage threads. You might even find free comedy (much funnier if you speak Japanese, we’re told) and most restaurants, bars and Izakayas (traditional pubs) touted super-cheap food and drink deals. Naturally enough, this attracts thousands of Tokyo’s students and young locals, who pour through the streets looking for fun – just what we need to point our lenses at.
Ever up for some mischief on camera or off, Go was never short of something funny to say or do, which made filming a pleasure as we shot street life and some of the quirkier sides to the district. One of the more oddball being a speciality egg shop. You could handle the eggs, view photos and histories of the chickens that laid them, and read quotes from the farmers, complete with discussion boards on yolk colour and quality.
We went to one of Tokyo’s leading tea houses, where people queue politely for hours to sample award-winning matcha (powdered green tea) and we have to say it was sensational. (The matcha shaved-ice here is a MUST)
Go also introduced us to a packed out Tsukemen (dipping noodle) shop, where lunch was hand-made before our eyes and cost about USD7 for a huge helping of simple deliciousness.
And to cap it all off, we found an all-day happy hour with draft beers at about USD $1.50. Tokyo on the cheap – the perfect remedy.
Koichi and the Big Stuff
Rat & Dragon reached into our list of contacts and were delighted to find Koichi – Sound Designer, Bassist and Tokyo Local – who offered to guide us to ‘must see’ Tokyo.
First stop was Akihabara, the tech-geek-chic district otherwise known as Electric City. Cliff-like high rise buildings house story upon story of electronics, gaming, manga and anime stores. Their facades blaze with monumental billboards where you’ll come face to face with your larger-than-life anime character or pop star heroes, five stories high.
Here we took a sneaky peek under the skirt of Tokyo’s infamous maid cafes. Filming and photography was rigorously restricted, so to experience the weirdness of it, you’ll just have to go.
Instead of saying ‘excuse me’ you’ll need to ‘nyeng-nyeng’ (the Japanese equivalent of ‘meow meow’) for your maid’s attention. There are also cat gestures to accompany this, and you’ll get extra praise if you wear ears to do so. Your maid is gorgeous, wearing a frilly French Maid outfit, and will even address you as ‘Master’ (or Princess, if you’re so inclined). Your coffee will come with your choice of a baby bear or kitten illustration in chocolate, hand-drawn at your table. Weird? Just shrug it off with a ‘that’s Tokyo’.
To balance things up, Koichi then took us to Asakusa, Tokyo’s boldest inner-city shrine, for some quiet contemplation and traditional fortune telling amid the sumptuous colours and structures of the temple.
As if that wasn’t contrast enough, we then journeyed with Koichi on the ultra-modern Yurikamome driverless elevated train to O-Daiba, an island reclaimed from the waters of Tokyo bay. Stunning harbour views and some of Tokyo’s most iconic modern architecture and attractions feed straight into the eyeballs.
Bathing Apes
Long time friends of Rat & Dragon, Erika and Ryoko, helped us break free from the Tokyo madness by hatching an escape plan to the mountains. From Tokyo, it was a 250km trip to Nagano prefecture and a forested valley called Jigokudani. After a ½ hour trek along a snowy forest path amid towering pine, we reached a natural onsen (hot spring pool) that has been taken over by a clan of Japanese macaques, also knows as Snow Monkeys. These guys get warm in the soothing hot waters, their little monkey faces turning bright red as they heat up and soak like furry little teabags. Monkey antics are funny at the best of times, but when wet and snowy, it makes for pure comedy and great filming. Rat & Dragon’s take on David Attenborough. Watch for our Snow Monkey blog coming soon!
And then of course it was back to the city and countless more experiences. A trip to the Sumo, the bright lights and madness of Shibuya crossing (see our blog post) and one of the most spectacular sunsets we’ve ever witnessed, viewed from the 45th floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan building when Mt Fuji popped out of the hazy crimson skyline right before our eyes. More food adventures, some mindboggling nights out and you have one hell of a film. Stay tuned for The Tokyo Project…
