This late in the year, tour operators don’t make any promises about how high up Fuji you’ll be able to go, or how well you’ll be able to see it from a distance. Ice on the roads kept us from getting past the third station, but visibility was clear all day long.

See?

Okay, admittedly Oowakudani is a popular tourist destination for both natives and foreigners, but come on. What’s she doing here?

…just be sure to check its aim.

One of the songs on my workout mix is Morning Musume’s I Wish. I hate Tsunku’s background vocals, but otherwise it’s a fun song, and a cute video (albeit a bit confusing to anyone who hasn’t seen their weekly television show…). The lyrics made it a popular concert-closer, especially for “graduation” concerts.

Last night, though, I suddenly realized that not only has the group turned over completely since this video was made, only two of them are still actively producing new singles and videos.

In order of appearance:

1. Ai Kago: career suicide. Her smoking scandal benched her for a year, and just as they started the publicity campaign to bring her back into the family, she got caught returning from a hot springs resort with a notorious womanizer. Latest twist: her mom is now promising to pose nude for a photobook.
2. Maki Gotou: abruptly retired at the peak of her solo career, allegedly due to burnout.
3. Natsumi Abe: successful solo artist.
4. Mari Yaguchi: kicked out of the group, still in the family. Popular television host and actress.
5. Hitomi Yoshizawa: Retired for family reasons, then resumed a light performance schedule when Tsuji's sudden ilness turned out to be...
6. Nozomi Tsuji: retired, married, new mother.
7. Rika Ishikawa: leader of spinoff group Biyuuden.
8. Yuuko Nakazawa: actress and occasional solo artist.
9. Kei Yasuda: recently resurfaced as an actress, still in the family.
10. Kaori Iida: solo career on hiatus due to pregnancy and subsequent marriage.

Kago’s the only one who really burned her bridges with Hello!Project. Most of the rest still show up occasionally in a concert, a one-shot group, or a few episodes of Uta Doki.

Now available from Amazon.

[Update: link added for the back of the map]

One thing I couldn’t find online before the trip was a good map of places to go in Akihabara. The ones I did find were either inaccurate, incomplete, not to scale, required local knowledge, and/or were drawn with complete disregard for the Western notion that North should either be at the top or clearly marked.

The time I spent marking things up in Google Earth did help me find a few places, but it doesn’t produce useful printouts, so I couldn’t bring it with me as PDFs.

Fortunately, less than ten seconds after we stepped out of the station, a pretty girl in a maid costume handed me this (3MB JPEG). The back side of it has more ads and a sorted list of shops and their block numbers.

This is apparently produced by the folks at Akiba Guide.

[Update: Oh, yes, North is to the right, and in Google Maps the area looks like this.]

[Update: just for fun, I dropped this map into Google Earth, and it’s very well-scaled. There’s some distortion around the south edge, most likely to get everything to fit, but most of the map overlays so well that you can easily locate individual shops.

Also, someone has made a set of Google Maps pushpins that covers some of the highlights of Akihabara in English. There are also two decent ones (1, 2) if you can read some Japanese. The first one is a collection of maid cafes, the other is more general.]

Steven has declared a unit of measurement. Sometime during the blur that was my vacation in Japan, I found something that I think measures up:

In addition to her high-school uniform, she enjoys busting out of a yukata, a miko outfit, frilly western dresses, and lacy lingerie. She’s the oldest of four sisters, and their Parents Are Traveling Abroad. And Our Hero has just moved in with them, having been Sent Down From The Mountains by his father to Become Stronger in the ways of the samurai.

She’s his new teacher.

Less than an hour after moving in, he manages to get into a Compromising Position with all three of her younger sisters at the same time.

Second sister is a bleached-blonde modern girl who’s sensitive about her small bust. Third sister is a sexually aggressive busty meganekko Gal doujin manga artist and junior high-school student. Fourth sister is a fourth-grader, who doesn’t appear to be a harem loli, fortunately, even if she does get dragged into the Wacky Hijinks.

“Thank you for removing yourself from the gene pool.”

There are two possibilities in this story: either he was one of the dumbest people on the face of the Earth, or he was making a “goodbye cruel world” call on his cellphone as he ignored the flashing lights, walked around the lowered crossing gates, and stepped in front of a moving train.