Me with Reika Saiki and Ladybeard of Deadlift Lolita.

I’ve barely done any significant writing in 2018, but that changed last week when I posted A Sunday With Ladybeard, A Unique Western Celebrity In Japan. It’s 3,000 words about attending a Deadlift Lolita concert and then going out to lunch with Ladybeard.

Since I had so much material to work with—basically an entire day with Ladybeard! Of all people!—I cut out some parts of the final piece. I left out the fact that John went to lunch with Ladybeard and I, since he’s a private individual anyway. I also left out the part that I was also wearing a Ladybeard shirt. Yes, while eating lunch with the guy whose face was on my shirt. But all day, I was more concerned about this than anyone else, including Ladybeard.

This is a feature first and foremost about Ladybeard, but secondly about the kind of enthusiasm I encountered repeatedly in Japan. In certain spaces, like a club during a concert, or Akihabara on a Saturday, people appeared to ditch their usual self-consciousness about their passions.

I talk about this occasional inhibition in the article here:

In America, I told Ladybeard, adult concert attendees showing the same sort of merchandised enthusiasm would be considered to be “trying too hard,” to say the least. It’d be too performative in the land of irony, where liking anything too much simply isn’t cool. You have to be more subtle, I tell him, wondering if “subtlety” is even in this over-the-top performer’s vocabulary.

“You’re kidding me,” Ladybeard says.

And then later, specifically to Ladybeard. Though after meeting him, I’d argue that Ladybeard’s entire shtick is that he’s not joking around. He becomes his character:

I ask what kind of drive prompts a guy to put on a frilly dress every morning without feeling silly when he looks in the mirror, and quickly realize from Ladybeard’s expression that this is the wrong question. It wouldn’t occur to this man, who has so fully absorbed his persona, to feel silly in his own clothes.

During lunch, I also asked Ladybeard about how he managed to get his makeup ready as Cammy at 2017’s Comike 92, since it’s considered rude to appear in cosplay in ordinary spaces, like on the elevated train to Odaiba. He said they did the makeup and hair at home, and he wore a hoodie and a flu mask on the train to cover up. (Once he got to Comiket, however, he did anything but cover up.) It feels like there is this divide between places where the priority is to avoid standing out, and places where fans completely let their hair down.

I wanted to make sure I wasn’t projecting my own cultural mindset here, so for the story I spoke to Keiko Nishimura, a native Japanese speaker and a Cultural Studies PhD candidate at University of North Carolina. To Nishimura, it’s a matter of how fan events are treated in a wider cultural context. In the US, concerts aren’t all that differentiated from other events:

“I have only been to few concerts in the US (Tycho playing at Raleigh NC, for example) and my sense is that the concerts are more part of everyday life for many Americans, whereas Japanese events are that of festival, the carnival, the out of ordinary (thinking of Bakhtin’s notion here). The participants might be embarrassed if their dances etc are seen out of context, but in it it’s more appropriate to go crazy, and I believe sometimes it’s even rude not to be crazy.”

Fans pretending to worship Reika during her solo.

Nishimura said she first became aware of the difference at Fuji Rock Festival, a major annual international music event in Yuzawa, Japan.

“I’ve been to FRF with my Japanese friends several times, who always wore something from that band… and didn’t realize it was considered uncool until my American husband hesitantly told me. I don’t think the difference is… cultural (not necessarily national culture but that of how different events are organized in different communities),” she told me in an email. “You don’t want to be seen as just a random stranger not knowing what to do, but rather wear whatever that signals you are part of it, and bond over with the potential friends.”

I think this is also the explanation for why I saw women showing off incredibly decorated itabags, featuring their favorite male characters, at Ikebukuro fujoshi haven Otome Road and miraculously nowhere else. (Maybe they put them in more discreet bags on the train?) This was certainly why Ladybeard, who has no personal incentive not to do so, covered his frilly dress with an oversized hoodie while traveling in and out of the concert venue. It explained why I saw people in over-the-top Hanshin Tigers ensembles inside the stadium and nowhere else.

I love learning about what makes passionate fans tick and my latest trip to Japan was a crash course in the way another culture chooses to put that enthusiasm on display. In Japan, it felt like there were very clear boundaries about where it was and was not OK to express your fandom—and inside those fan spaces, people let loose like I’ve never seen before.

John and I in our Tigers jerseys.

1) Everybody loves an underdog

When I mentioned in Japanese class that I was thinking about attending a Hanshin Tigers game during my next trip to Japan, one of my classmates jokingly booed. Everybody knows the Tigers are not great. Certainly they don’t win as often as the Yomiuri Giants, Tokyo’s most successful team. Growing up in the DC area rooting for the Baltimore Orioles (who kind of suck), and eventually the Nationals (who are great now, but it took ages for them not to suck), it’s pretty much in my genes to support teams that perform badly for arbitrary reasons.

When I saw that the Tigers would be playing the Giants during my trip, and knowing that they share Japanese baseball’s most enduring rivalry (they are sometimes compared to the Red Sox vs. the Yankees), I knew this was the game I wanted to see.

The game begins

2) They have a mysterious curse

It does not matter what country you are in, baseball nuts are a superstitious bunch. The Tigers had an 18-year-losing streak that is generally considered the fault of KFC mascot Colonel Sanders—The Curse of The Colonel. You really can’t make this stuff up.

In 1985, the Tigers won the Japan Series for the first and only time. Fans celebrated by gathering around Dotonbori’s famous Glico Man sign (which resembles an athlete crossing a finish line and which Kansai residents associate with victory), while fans who resembled Tigers players took a celebratory dive into the canal. Of course, this was when American player (and current state senator) Randy Bass was on the team, and there wasn’t a white guy on hand to stand in for him. So fans snagged a nearby KFC mascot and chucked it in the canal instead.

While he was down there, apparently, the Colonel got mad and the Tigers started losing. The statue was retrieved in 2009, missing an arm and its glasses—but the Tigers haven’t won the Japan Series since ‘85. Still, this is exactly the kind of bizarre and nonsensical baseball trivia that got my friends on board with attending a Tigers game in particular.

Ivy growing on the entrance to the museum

3) Hanshin Koshien Stadium is the oldest ballpark in Japan

I was surprised to learn the earliest version of the aforementioned Glico sign went up in 1935, but Hanshin Koshien Stadium, where the Tigers play, is even older. Built in 1924, it’s only 12 years younger than America’s oldest baseball stadium, Fenway Park in Boston. It’s completely outdoors, which was perfect on a mid-April day.

I thought I lucked out with seats (in the “Alps” area above first base), but fans have since assured me there are no bad seats in the house. How comfortable those seats are is a different story. While the stadium has certainly been redone several times since 1924, attendees still sit on backless benches, not chairs.

Since the stadium is so old, it even has a museum. I learned that Babe Ruth played at Koshien Stadium near the end of his career. There was also an exhibit that showed all the times Koshien has been featured in anime and manga (since national high school baseball tournaments take place there in real life, it’s a lot of them).

I used Koshien Stadium’s English-language instructions to buy tickets, and they were relatively affordable (about $25 per person). There was even a special deal for foreigners: buy a game ticket and a stadium museum ticket (about $5) and get a free Tigers jersey. Walking with three other foreigners in Tigers jerseys, I think we made a lot of people’s day. More than anywhere else in Japan, I heard people talking about us: the gaijin-san in jerseys. And whenever the Tigers scored, drunk guys in business suits would come over and give us high fives.

Fans blowing up balloons ahead of the 7th inning…

4) Their fans have the most elaborate cheers

Before I left for Japan I thought it would be cool to memorize at least one Tigers cheer, but that was before I realized that cheering for sports teams in Japan is, pun intended, a whole different ballgame. Tigers fans have 29 different cheers, including individual cheers for certain players when they’re at bat, and some even have multiple verses. There was a designated cheering section at the game with people playing instruments and everything.

Since cheering was such a big deal, the Giants had their own cheering section in the stadium. What you wouldn’t see in America though: each cheering section limited their cheers to while their team was at bat, and sat quietly while the other fanbase was cheering for their team.

The Tigers lost pretty badly in the game I watched—2 to 8, unfortunately—but every time there was any hope, the crowd went wild as if the Tigers were already winning.

‘Lucky 7’ in action

5) They have an amazing 7th inning tradition

When we flagged down the nearest beer seller in the stands for some Sapporo, she asked us in English if this was our first Tigers game. When we said yes, she asked if we had brought yellow balloons. We hadn’t and we were pretty stumped by her question, up until the 7th inning.

That’s when everyone around us suddenly starting blowing up oblong yellow balloons, some with black stripes drawn on them in Sharpie so they looked like tiger tails. If we were in the US, this is the time when everyone in the stadium would stand up for the 7th inning stretch. Here though, what was everyone going to do with these balloons?

If you google “Lucky 7” you can see what I saw: a simultaneous balloon release in time with a chant. It’s a specific tradition at Koshien Stadium, not something all Japanese baseball fans do. And if the Tigers win, they do it again at the end of the game.

If you aren’t a sports fan, I don’t think attending a game in Japan is going to make you one. But if you already like baseball, I’d recommend checking out what the Tigers can do. It was amazing to see a pastime I’ve always associated with America transformed into something unfamiliar. Baseball has been in Japan for more than a century now, and in that time it has gone native, with its own quirks and idiosyncrasies exclusive to Japan. Americans may love baseball, but the Japanese don’t love it any less—and it shows.

View from the second floor.

I didn’t do everything right on my trip to Japan. I, for example, accidentally took myself and my friends on a 20-kilometer march around Shinjuku. But the rightest thing I did was book an authentic traditional Japanese villa on the Kamogawa River in Kyoto.

You can just make it out!

Last time I visited Kyoto, in 2016, I booked a hotel that I was not crazy about. My favorite parts of Kyoto were its old buildings and shrines, and I wondered if there was a way to get a more authentic experience while my friends and I were there. While searching online for old-fashioned lodgings, I landed on K’s Villa Kamogawa-an, a traditional Kyoto home available for vacation rental.

The front entrance to both rentals.

After looking at the photos online, I knew I had to stay here. Kamogawa-an is advertised as large enough for seven people, and I’ve always heard that you should double your lodgings in Japan because of how much space Americans are accustomed to. (For example, an Airbnb advertised for four people would probably be a better fit for two Americans.) So I figured it’d be the perfect size for me, John, and our two travel partners. In fact, we’d find out, it was just big enough for four!

Inside the entry, the door to Kamogawa-an.

We took the bullet train from Tokyo and arrived in Kyoto a little earlier than the villa was available, so we went to K’s House, a backpacker hostel owned by the renters, to store our luggage. The company runs a handful of hostels in different cities in Japan, but it originated with just one in Kyoto. As the company expanded, it began buying residential properties in Kyoto, too. I rented the largest of the three. It’s technically the larger partition of a single home that K’s Villa has turned into two rentals. It’s in a quiet residential area (so we needed to be quiet, too), but only a ten-minute walk from Kyoto’s main train station.

The river is right behind the garden wall.

When it was check-in time, a friendly English-speaking guide led us to the house, showed us how to use the passcode out front, and showed how to open the tricky front door in the courtyard. She didn’t leave before adding her three favorite local restaurants to our map. While I signed some waivers, my friends were already exploring the villa’s two floors. On the ground floor, there’s a courtyard in front and a garden overlooking the Kamogawa River in back. A tatami room on each floor has an entire wall of glass for the best possible river views.

Oden at a guide-recommended bar right by the villa.

At this point, I should mention that this villa was cheaper per person than a hotel. It definitely depends on the yen-to-dollar exchange at the time, but when I booked, it was around ¥12000 per person per night—at the time, less than $100 a person, but at the time of this writing, a little more. This includes a yukata rental for me and each of my friends, because I wasn’t going to stay in a traditional villa with a cypress bathtub without putting on a yukata after my bath. It also included a complimentary cleaning halfway through our stay.

View from an (empty) bathtub.

During our five nights in Kyoto, we did not actually spend all that much time in the villa. Instead, we used it as our home base while we took day trips to Nara, Osaka, and Himeji. The villa’s windows were perfect in the early morning for birdwatching (I saw herons, egrets, and more right outside), and the heated kotatsu was awesome for Kyoto’s still-chilly April evenings. Twice we grabbed take-out gyoza at Kyoto Station’s 551 Horai on the way back, to eat around the kotatsu while watching Japanese variety shows.

These stairs are tough first thing in the morning.

Now the downsides: the stairs to the upper floor were basically a ladder. Anyone with mobility problems would have trouble with them. They were not unlike the steep stairs in Himeji Castle, built in 1600. Also, while there were two toilets (heated and with all the bells and whistles you expect from toilets in Japan), there was one bath for four people. A really nice bath, yes, but it requires some coordination for everyone to get a turn. I also felt like our sleeping arrangements for four people, John and I sharing a room, took up the entire upstairs, so I have no idea how this villa would fit seven. Maybe they’d put futons in the kotatsu room on the first floor? Or maybe this imaginary group of seven includes several small children.

Checking my email from the first floor tatami room.

I’ve been to Kyoto before, but I stayed in a hotel in a very urban part of town. Waking up riverside to watch wading birds and listen to my neighbor practice the oboe was just as memorable as some of the tourist attractions I went to. If like me, you’re sort of wary of Airbnb after one too many negative encounters, this merged the professionalism of a hotel with a residential experience.

Early morning bedhead and river views.

Finally, you should know that I got a small discount for writing about staying at the villa online. But let’s be honest, I was going to blog about it anyway.

Snowy Owl, Akihabara, Tokyo

This was one of the Owl No Mori cafe. He had a sign next to him that said he didn’t like to be touched, but photos without flash were OK. You can’t see it in this photo, but he is standing in front of a rotating fan to keep cool. A little while after I took this photo, a cafe employee came by to serve him a few drinks of water in a plastic bottle cap. It cracked me up how accustomed he was to being waited on! I wrote a little more about my trip to the owl cafe on Forbes.

Gray Heron and Mallard Ducks, Kamogawa River, Kyoto

When I was in Kyoto, I rented a riverside villa and ended up doing a lot of birdwatching. I hardly recognized any of the birds I saw, so the Kyoto bird checklist was a big help. This gray heron was outside my window fishing every morning. Even though these birds are fairly large, they were one of the most common species I’d see on the river. Apart from mallards, I also saw a bunch of redhead ducks that look like a color swap (or maybe a shiny Pokemon version) of the same species.

Little Egret, Kamogawa River, Kyoto

Little Egrets don’t look like this year round. Both males and females grow that wispy plumage to attract a mate. With the cherry blossoms mostly fallen and the temperature climbing into the high 70s, we were well into breeding season when I was in Kyoto. I could tell because, on top of the plumage, they were especially noisy, beginning early in the morning! I wish I could have captured this one’s bright yellow feet in this photo, but I’ll settle for that mirror image in the river.

Sika Deer, Nara

Approaching Nara Park, we saw a lot of cutesy deer mascots and photographs of perfectly groomed deer in advertisements, but the deer in the park were unmistakably wild, with thick, unkept fur. On the American East Coast, only baby deer have spotted rumps, but Sika deer have it their whole lives. It makes them look deceptively innocent, but deer like the one I photographed are shrewd old pros who know bowing is a cool trick that helps them get fed. One deer alone will be polite, but when two are upon you, they start to get aggressive, competing for rice crackers. But put up your hands, and they leave you alone—it’s the universal sign for “I am out of food to give you.”

Pond Turtles, Nara

I snapped this sunbathing pair in Nara, but I also saw plenty of the same species in Shinjuku Gyoen in Tokyo and a few in a pond at Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto.We were lucky to get a lot of sunny days, so I saw a bunch, always when they were sunning themselves near a body of water. Their Latin name is nihon ishigame, Japanese stone turtle, and I get it—it looks like a rock. They seem pretty hardy, considering that second one has a crack in its shell.

Calico Cat, Fushimi Inari, Kyoto

We saw a bunch of small, young cats of all different colors but mainly the same size, and concluded they were probably litter mates. All over the mountain they can be seen sunning themselves and begging for food and pets. On our way down the mountain we saw a sign introducing us to the shrine cats, including photos and names for some. I thought there might be a warning not to feed the feral cats, but instead it recommended their favorite foods.

I took more than 700 photos in Japan and didn’t live blog as much as I wanted to—partly because Forbes asked me to stick to pop culture topics only. So I’ll be posting more about the trip here for a while until I get some of it out of my system. What would you like to read about next?