Singing Dancing Zombies
So I said a while back I was going to talk about how singing, dancing zombies pushed me over the edge to visit Japan. This one is one I tried to do as an audio post, but I couldn’t really articulate things as well as I was hoping… not to mention I hate the sound of my own voice. So, good news this story won’t require listening to my voice. Bad news, this story will require reading my stream of consciousness writing.
I think I’ve said in the past that going to Japan was the culmination of a life-long desire. I don’t know when it began, or how it began, but for as long as I can remember I’ve been… I wouldn’t call it obsessed, per se, but perhaps interested in Japan. It may have something to do with a story my mother likes to tell about how I used to read encyclopedias for fun in the long long ago. For those too young to understand that bit, an encyclopedia was like Wikipedia, but printed out into multiple volumes. Also, they technically had less information than Wikipedia because they weren’t ever evolving from day to day with what people found interesting at the time.
Perhaps it had something to do with the pictures in the encyclopedia. The thriving metropolitan area known as Tokyo, contrasting with all the scenes of peaceful shrines tucked away in jaw-dropping vistas. To my young mind, this was absolutely amazing. I mean sure, we have thriving metropolitan areas in the states, but Tokyo just seemed a step beyond what we have. It was like super New York City.
The big problem with achieving this goal, was perhaps personal circumstances. There was no way that my family would ever have been able to fly there, for a family of 5 that would have been impossible. My dad was an auto mechanic, so money was not really pouring in, and for most of my memory my mom has been out of work after a back injury. Add to that, that my dad is a giant like myself, and my mom is also decently tall, so fitting into an airplane was not something they relished. Between the leg room needed and my mom’s bad back… well, you get the picture.
So for me, travel was a sort of alien concept. Sure, we took some vacations when I was young, we went to New Orleans one year, and we also went to Atlanta once but that is only a vague memory. It wasn’t until I got my driver’s license that I really started to travel. I drove to Sandusky, Ohio which inadvertently led to my first experience with international travel. Let me tell you, my dealings with the US border agents terrified me, honestly I am surprised I ever got up the nerve to go out of the country again. But that didn’t stop me, I visited Toronto, and I’d say that was my first real foray into the metropolitan.
I’m sure I mentioned in one of my posts that I have severe social anxiety. Dealing with people, especially people I don’t know can be borderline debilitating. Seriously, watch Bocchi the Rock and you’ll get an idea of what I go through… except I don’t play the guitar, I do have a ukulele that is somewhat like a guitar, right? Anyway, I visited Toronto around July 1st. This will likely mean nothing to a lot of people, but July 1st is Canada Day, and Toronto is one of the biggest cities in Canada. Needless to say, I was terrified again… It seems my forays into Canada have managed to terrify me both times. But, underneath the terror was excitement… I wanted to do this again, even if it would push my boundaries.
I went on to visit Chicago (which I am now remembering I visited in limited capacity as a child), San Francisco, Memphis, Seattle, Los Angeles (this one barely counts… it was technically just an 8 hour layover), Washington DC (which I suppose I did visit in High School) and most importantly to this story, New York City. In my mind, New York City was about as close to Tokyo I would come in terms of big cities. The lights and grandeur of Time Square, the immense buildings… it was honestly a game changer. I sadly do not remember which order I visited all these cities in, so… We’ll leave things here.
…damn, I’ve rambled a lot up to this point, but trust me you need to understand things about my life to understand the trip to Japan.
So it was nearly 20 years after I got my license when I saw the signing dancing zombies. Small aside, seeing Michael Jackson’s Thriller was one of my earliest memories, so… singing dancing zombies are pretty much ingrained in my brain. But, during the COVID plague, I signed up for Crunchyroll, an anime streaming service. Anime, for those unfamiliar, are effectively Japanese cartoons. Like Western cartoons, they can be childish (Pokemon) or very adult (Insert your favorite reference to Japanese people and tentacles here). I’m an animation lover. But I have things that really ruin animation for me. In my mind, the perfect animation has:
Good animation/art
Good voice acting
Those two criteria are important. I believe a show can have bad animation, if the voice acting is great. Similarly, I can forgive some bad voice acting if the animation is great. This is one of the reasons I can’t stand Rick and Morty. The animation style is annoying, and the voice acting is like nails on a chalkboard. Anyone who says they like Morty, is a giod-damned liar! That voice makes me want to go back in time, and punch the voice actor as a baby. Voice acting should never induce the urge to invent time travel just to punch a baby.
I got off on another tangent there, back to Crunchyroll. While scrolling through shows on the service, I saw something called “Zombieland Saga”. Well, I liked the movie Zombieland, so this seemed like a good choice. I hit play and sit back to see what happens. Well, first… it has nothing to do with the movie Zombieland, and everything to do with singing dancing zombies. I watched the first season in practically a single sitting. And after a short break, I went on to crush the second season in a second sitting. This show was stupid, and funny, and completely insane.
Zombieland Saga follows the unlife of a girl by the name of Sakura Minamoto, who is unceremoniously killed by a speeding truck in the opening scene of the show. Seriously, this opening had me hooked. It looked like it was going to be a simple slice-of-life anime, but was quickly derailed. The opening credits roll as a heavy metal growling song plays. Anyway Sakura rises from the dead as a zombie in an effort to save Saga. Saga is a prefecture and a city in said prefecture in Japan. It falls roughly between Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For visualization purposes, I present a prefecture map of Japan stolen from Wikipedia:
Notice the grey area at the bottom left, that is the island of Kyushu. Saga butts up against Nagasaki. As a small aside Saga was at one time absorbed into Nagasaki back in the Meiji era (circa 1876). Anyway, in the show Saga is cursed to fall into obscurity, and one man is determined to not let that happen. Enter Kotaro Tatsumi. He puts together a 7 zombie idol group, in an effort to put Saga on the map, so to speak. As this turns into an idol anime, there are songs, not necessarily the primary focus of the show, but there is a lot of music. (I have the soundtrack sitting by my computer). Within the first three episodes these would-be idols have a shambling death metal show, a game of hot potato with a severed head followed by a rap battle, and then they settle into the poppy music one would expect from idols. Honestly, the song from the third episode shows up quite often in the first season, so much so that I would call it the signature song of the anime.
“But how does any of this lead to you going to Japan?” I can hear you asking… we’ll get to that eventually. I am jumping in here to tell some more stories. My dad had both knees replaced, and never fully recovered. He has effectively been wheelchair bound since the second knee was done. Then in 2022 my Mom got her first knee done. Combined with my knee pains, I saw this as a portent of the future, I was going to end up getting my knees replaced at some point. I was left with two sides of the coin before me… my dad who never recovered and my mom who was up and walking. I realized my chances to travel might be extremely limited, and this increased my desire to travel. If I ended up like dad, travel would be completely off the table. I needed to do something big.
Enter season 2 of Zombieland Saga (properly referred to as Zombieland Saga Revenge). The second episode of the season features the Yutoku Inari Shrine. This was the final push. Even in animated form the shrine looked amazing, and when I looked it up and realized it was a real place, I knew I wanted to go there. This lead to a long planning process. Originally, I wanted to have my entire trip be based on the island of Kyushu (remember the grey part of the picture above) but that was going to require a 3rd leg of my travels. So, I reluctantly made Tokyo the focal point of my trip, with the Yutoku Inari Shrine being a goal. Time for another picture!
A comparison of Japan to the United States. In this picture Tokyo is placed above Washington DC. The Yutoku Inari shrine is somewhere around St Louis. Perhaps closer to Evansville, Indiana… Either way, that is a good 10-12 hour drive. My two points of interest were separated by almost half a day. According to Google maps, Tokyo to Kashima is actually a longer drive than from DC to St. Louis. Nearly 14 hours! I was not going to do a 14 hour trip for a single destination, so I researched the Japanese railways. Turns out, by train Tokyo to Kashima is only about 7 hours. Still longer than I want to do in a single trip, this lead to my stops in Kyoto, Kuratsu, and Hiroshima. I don’t mention Kashima since that was the focal point of this side quest. I wanted to spend 2 days in Kashima, but… turns out Kashima doesn’t really have hotels, so I was out of luck there, and that is why I stopped in Kuratsu.
It is worth noting that there are some parts of Zombieland Saga that take part in Kuratsu, but due to a hotel booking error, which is to say I booked the wrong hotel, my timetables were screwed up in Kuratsu, so I missed out on the spots I wanted to visit. When you consider one of the places I wanted to go to was the Niji-no-matsubara pine forest, my ambitions may not seem particularly noteworthy. It is even worse, since the two spots I planned to visit ended up being only about 30 minutes of walking away from my hotel. I’m an idiot, and played it safe that day.
So there you have it, why I went to Japan, perhaps this will be interesting to someone. It was interesting to me, and that is what really matters. I leave you with an image from the anime… This was the only place in Kuratsu that I saw from the anime. Kuratsu station.
