Random Japan

Awesome cosplay tour offers photos shoots with explosions and blazing flames! 

Casey Baseel

Don’t try this at home!

Even if you’ve put together a pretty sweet cosplay outfit, it kind of defeats the purpose if you get dressed up just to snap some pictures in your living room. A proper costume needs a proper backdrop, after all.

That’s why Japan’s Cosnavi organizes cosplay photo shoot trips to locations such as rural schoolhouses, centuries-old farmhouses, and abandoned factories. This spring, Cosnavi will be taking interested cosplayers to Mt. Ifuneyama in Tochigi Prefecture.

Characters from fantasy or science fiction series should look right at home in the rugged terrain, and the fact that many tokusatsu shows have been filmed at Mt. Ifuneyama should make the trip even more attractive to fans of Japan’s costumed superhero programs. But if you want your photos to be especially action-packed, Cosnavi has a bang of an idea.

INDOOR SKI RESORTS NEAR TOKYO

Snow place like home

BY MUBITA MAMBWE

Indoor skiing in Japan has seen better days: once thriving in Japan with slopes set up within driving distance of downtown Tokyo, the number of resorts has dwindled to a mere handful in the last decade. 

But with the surviving indoor ski joints, there’s still plenty of fun to be had for those that crave a quick getaway to the slopes without worrying about shinkansen and accommodation fees, or having taking a few days off from work.

Sayama Ski Resort

The Sayama Ski Resort is conveniently tucked away in Saitama Prefecture—a mere 40-minute train ride from Ikebukuro, 60 from Shinjuku—and houses a very lengthy indoor ski slope that measures at 300 meters long. While the slopes are generally open from 10am to 9pm, the resort has days where it’s available for all-nighters, open from 10pm to 6am—just in time to make it back for breakfast in Tokyo. Check with the resort or their website for schedules.

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Why bureaucrats' salaries keep rising regardless of state of the economy

TOKYO — 

How is it, asks the business magazine President (Feb 1), that bureaucrats’ salaries are rising while private sector wages are not?

The bureaucracy, to those not in it, can seem a cushy, protected safe haven from the cutthroat competition and economic vagaries that assail the private sector. Resentment is natural, and at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s December announcement of the second consecutive annual raise for national government employees, there was sardonic under-one’s-breath grumbling about “otoshidama” (a gift of New Year’s spending money usually given to children) while the rest languished.

It was the first back-to-back raise for bureaucrats in 24 years, writes economic journalist Tomoyuki Isoyama in President. The suspicion it fuels, he says, is that the government’s controversial economic reform package, dubbed Abenomics, benefits the privileged at the expense of everyone else.