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A Journey To The Tower Of The Sun
I had a vague idea to visit the sight of the 1970 Osaka World Expo while I was in Japan last month, but not much of plan before I went. On the express train it's almost a 2 hour journey from the in-laws place, so I took with me one of my favorite manga, 20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa. One the advantages of a month of holidays is the time to read and wander aimlessly. I was almost to the end of the series, so it was a good opportunity to finish the last two volumes.
There were posters advertising 40th Anniversary of the 1970 Osaka World Expo at the station when I arrived at Namba. After a quick bento I studied the station map and jumped on the subway to the North of the city and the monorail which connects Senri Chuo station with Expo Commemoration Park.
In Japanese Expo '70 is known as Ōsaka Banpaku (大阪万博). The theme was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." This was the first World's Fair held in Japan and one of the most well attended world fairs in history with almost a third of Japan's population visiting it over a 6 month period.
There are only a few remants of the expo remaining, including Tarō Okamoto's remarkable Tower of The Sun, which dominates Senri hill. As you approach from the west the tower is visible from a great distance. Okamoto was member of the Paris avant garde in the 1930's and had a deep fascination with the occult. Perhaps you can see this in the totemic style of the three external faces of the tower.
On the front you see the present flanked by red thunder. The golden disk at the top represents the future. On the back is the black sun of the past. The interior was once open to the public, who could rise to the full heigh of 70 metres on an elevator and moving staircases. In the centre of the tower was another artwork callled the tree of life, and in the basement another face, the sun of the underworld.
The park was planned by the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange, and the structures contained within represented the peak of human engineering acheivement at the time. Highlights included early mobile phone prototypes, local area networking and maglev train technology.
Take for example the United States pavilion - extraordinary for not only the technical and architecural innovation it embodied, but for the low cost of construction - made from only four materials for less than half a million dollars. The long span cable stiffened pneumatic dome, the first of it's kind, became the model for the majority of sports domes in existence today. All that is left of the United States' pavilion is a plaque commemorating the place where it stood and the hugely popular moon rook that it housed.
The expo is situated in time between the uncertain post war years and boom years of the later part of the century. Embued with an optimism for the future, Expo '70 undoubtably had a lot to do with inspiring Japan to become the advanced technological nation it is today.
A brisk walk around the park takes two hours and is well worth it, with a wide variety of gardens and sculptures along the way. In July it was 32 degrees celcius in the shade, so not too many people were around. Though I probably wasn't allowed, I took the opportunity to cool off in a stream in the middle of a secluded forest.
Through the forest runs an elevated observation pathway, which at it's furthest end stands a massive observation tower. The tower is onstructed entirely of wood and reminded me of the traditional architecture found within Japanese castles, only without an exterior facade.
AR大阪万博 by GORIMON, on Flickr
For many people I imagine a trip to the Expo '70 commemorative park is either to remember their first visit or some retro-futurism tourist jaunt. I wasn't there for an architectural tour or nature walk however, I was there to take a trip through the world imagined by Naoki Urasawa in his epic manga 20th Century Boys. It was a bit of of a manga geek trip, manga tabi if you will.
Expo 70 was a central to the story of 20th Century boys. First in 1970 as the ruse used by a young Fukube while he was writing the book of prophecy that would herald the bloody new years eve 2000 and he coming of a global government at the end of the world.
On that bloody new years eve, Kenji scaled the robot that was bringing death and destruction to Tokyo and came face to face with the tomodachi who stood on top of a gruesome replica of the Tower of The Sun.
The Tower of The Sun featured during the last stages as the place where the tomodachi plotted the assaination of the pope. The tomodachi then staged his own resurrection in front of the masses, becoming immortal in the process.
It was place that Kanna brought the people together for one final concert before the end of the world, and where Kenji roused the people of Tokyo to revolution.
Urawasa's epic work pulls together a whole host of post modern themes, bio-terrorism, mateship and betrayal, in a coming of age story that spans three generations. To wander around the park, which is dominated by the Tower of The Sun at the centre was to put myself in the picture. When you are culturally aware, the world seems an altogether different place.
Whatever your goals are for reaching fluency in Japanese, they must be accompanied by vision and imagination. You really need to be able to see yourself doing the the things you dream. And really, the book is much better than the movie.
You might also want to read other posts on this blog about manga:
- How
reading manga can be good for your Japanese
- How
to begin learning Japanese with manga
- How
to put the fun back into Japanese now the JLPT is over
If you really want to get into to manga, but don't know where to start read my free guide to manga. It'll show you how to get over the initial hurdles of reading in Japanese.
Thanks for reading, I mean that. You are what make this blog such
fabulous place to learn about Japanese language and culture. Thank you
for the support and the ongoing conversation on places like Facebook and Twitter.
price: ¥230($1.99)developer: gravity loves timeiTunes
“Symmertry” make symmetric photo as app name says.After loading photo, symmetry processing starts automatically. Flicking to right (bottom) will move left (top) source image to its direction. It's very simple. Clicking bottom right axis rotating button or flicking vertical (horizontal) quickly changes processing axis.Tutorial and further information is developer's website "gravity loves time".Clicking multiply axis button bellow, Symmetry reproduces new process with using latest symmetry image. With using this reproducing process, you can make fantastic image like kaleidoscope.
Simple symmetric photo made by this app may not be charming because duplicaded image tone is even in large part of photo, but strong composition is useful. I suggest re-touching with Photogene, ColorSplash or other your favorite image effect application after saving symmetric photo like below.
Application interface is clear, stable and response is quick. These are important for image processing tool. If I request something for Symmetry, supporting undo, saving session and blured edge composition.Anyway, ¥230($1.99) is reasonable price for this small nifty application.
How do you use web-server if you can bring to anywhere? ServersMan is tiny web-server hosts web site an WebDAV storage on iPhone.After activate your account, node name is set as reach-able URL to iPhone... The phrase before is not impressive then I'd want say again “URL on MY iPhone”. At first launch, I've got excited like the time to write first HTML tags.Activated ServersMan is stand alone web server ( in correct meaning, domain name is solved by developer FreeBit based on IPv6 technology named "Emotion Link"). The public_html directory hosts web contents to Internet after set "Public Web Access" on.
Factory set HTML shows location data, images and audio files which you set to publish. ServersMan have function to host images captured by iPhone's camera on the fly. Setting "Save Same File Name" to on, latest image will shown in same URL as pseudo camera streaming. This interesting function is same with audio file. ServersMan have recording function and save on same file also.
At the same time of launching ServersMan, Web DAV storage server works, and user can mount storage on computer's desktop with logging in. Mounted storage contains following directories. Node named directory contains editable html, images and other files hosted to WWW via ServersMan. You can edit html file on ServersMan application also.
If you want send files to iPhone, it is able to move files to MyStorage directory via WebDAV. Uploaded files appears on ServersMan to edit or preview. Opposite side transfer is able with using ServersMan's "WebGadget" menu. With using WebGadget, iPhone's photo album images and recorded files are able to be hosted to WWW and WebDAV.
Server transportation speed is rely on network where iPhone connected. Wi-Fi gives enough response and 3G network is not too slow.Current version has wrong path to get user id, sent e-mail from ServersMan expire after application is shut down. Then other computer is necessary in order to read pass-code to enter ServersMan activation text box.ServersMan has many weak-points. It is the most terrible battery eater ever I know. Even if I charging iPhone, ServersMan will eat battery out in 30 minutes. User interface is not clear. Web engineer can understand how it works but workflow is not streamlined. I think ServersMan's largest weak-point is html set by developer. Poor design html is not worth to publish from iPhone.ServersMan is not something special at this time, but the things opened by this tiny web server and iPhone seems to bring us harvestfull future, even if ServrsMan is not exist at there.I'm going to enjoy to think how ServersMan's concept work in future with modifying html on iPhone.
Picturely effect app is popularity in AppStore. Today, cool stuff is shipped, “re:NancyKPH - woodcut/rubber plate print-” is impressive wood cut picture effect application.This strange name is from Japanese pop rubber print artist "Nancy Seki". Her likeness portrait prints are graved on eraser rubber and printed. She died but you can see her impressive prints on Google image. Application re:NancyKPH make picture like her print from photos on iPhone.re:NancyKPH name is built as Nancy + K(o -"ko" means small) + S(eki) and (Hirax --read below) means in literal "dedicated small app for Nancy Seki and Hirax".Developer gravity loves time serves well designed web site for re:NancyKPH and tutorial page "re:NacyKPH Tutorial".Launching re:NancyKPH, Tutorial baby picture is shown and automatically process works.
Tapping screen shows menu button bar at bottom. Picture effect is able to be adjusted with tapping second left button. 3 sliders shown (pity! slider meaning is not shown. If the parameter names are shown below of sliders...). When you tap slider controls, parameter names appears on control panel. From top "Smooth", "Bold Edge", "Threshold" and "Paint". Effects don't work in real-time. Update button below panel shows effects after set parameters.Only I want developer make to implement on this cool app is real-time processing though it's not too slow. 
After set outline of your print, setting color from second right button shows ink color setting panel.This cool processing is based on Japanese famous geek engineer Hirax's one of huge archive. His humorous, informative and filled of deep wisdom blog impress many programmers in Japan. His blog “Dekirukana?(Can I do it?)” since 1998 is filled with fascinate toys for image processing engineers and programers. It's jewel box for our Japanese engineer.Developer gravity loves time seems to decide this cool app's price to be free from his respect to Nancy Seki and hirax.I'll keep in use NancyKPH for printing wood cut impressive picture on my hand.