06/01 - Retcon

What's there in a smell 

age gender and location

or nothing at all



There's many levels 

to truly well done retcon.

yourself as a child



Macklemore you nut,

this should not be expensive.

Look what you've done. 



There's a lot of good smells here in Tokyo. Since the first day I got here I've been noticing nice smells as I walk in all different areas. Just last week Aykut and I even decided to walk down into a different entrance of Ikebukuro Station because a nice smell was wafting up to the street. I've only noticed a few bad smells, which is quite incredible considering big cities often have some nasty odors kicking around. Today I wrote a haiku on the train about the smells, after I noticed the smell of sunscreen (one of my favourite smells) and realized it was coming from a western couple (pretty sure they were British) who had gotten on. It was immediately recognizable and I hadn't smelled sunscreen like that since I got here, other than on myself. It's not like me to think about smell so much, but there are definitely different smells here. I'm glad I can get on board with most of them.

The train I was taking took me to meet two other teachers in Shibuya, so we could go see the new X-Men movie "Days of Future Past". Simon, who I work with, and Scott, a fellow Canadian, were really fun to chat about movies and books with. After the movie, which was very entertaining, we discussed some other superhero movies, and the concept of retcon. Simon likes comic books and Scott is very into movies, so it was interesting to discuss with them. If you're unfamiliar with it, retcon means "retroactive continuity". Basically, past stories are changed or altered within the world of characters. I love the many effects good retcon can have, as it can make you rethink many things that have happened before and change outlooks or opinions that you may have previously held steadfast. The new X-Men film does a great job of utilizing retcon without it being a really obvious or heavy-handed alteration. Scott brought up the really good point that it actually makes you rethink the whole X-Men series of movies to date. Super cool! I felt that I had to rethink even beyond that, as the plot of the new movie borrows a lot from the plot of a season of the X-Men cartoon I loved in the '90s. Michael Chabon credits retcon with being a gift of comic books to the world of literature. His novel "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" uses retcon, establishing an alternate reality where the Jews are given land in Alaska to settle during World War II and Jerusalem has a different path than it does in actual history. I asked him about retcon at a reading in Vancouver a couple years back, when I was very interested in the topic. Definitely fun to have an intelligent discussion after watching a superhero movie with Japanese subtitles.

After the movie I met up with Clayton in Shimokitazawa. It's a really trendy area in Tokyo. Clayton likes to describe it as what you get when a Japanese hipster mafia takes over an area. We were both hungry so we grabbed some ramen at a really good ramen shop that Clayton frequents. It was absolutely delicious and after we ate I impressed the cook with a new Japanese phrase I had learned the night before. "Gochisōsama-deshita!" It means in a somewhat literal translation "you prepared a feast" but you can use it to say "thanks for the food" to the person who made or bought you a meal.
With noticeably heavy stomachs slowing us down we lumbered around the area afterwards, checking out lots of shops. Shimo is famous for its thrift shops, as any hipster haven should be. However, "thrift" is really popular here, so they end up being quite expensive. For example, we saw a University of Notre Dame hoodie that was very tattered and worn being sold for about 75 dollars Canadian. Clayton and I both agreed you could buy a brand new version of the hoodie at Jersey City in Calgary for about $40. Clayton noted you could even buy it at the store at the University itself for lower than the price they're selling it at here. There were actually a few cheaper shops selling old t-shirts and things, but I didn't buy anything. Apart from the thrift shops there were a lot of very American stores. Either shops that tried to look as American as possible or actual American brand stores, like Dickies. The best store we went into was a Japanese store called Village Vanguard, which has absolutely everything weird and wacky you could imagine. They sell some imported stuff, like Lays chips and Root Beer, as well as tons of crazy Japanese things. The array of colourful cartoon socks was impressive. I bought some Wolverine ones, in the style of the cartoon Wolverine from my childhood, not Hugh Jackman in the movies.