Mark's Mouth

Tokyo, Media Immersion Pods

In Tokyo, the New Trend Is 'Media Immersion Pods' - New York Times

In Tokyo, the New Trend Is 'Media Immersion Pods'
Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

Browsing for comic books at the Bagus Gran Cyber Café in Tokyo.

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: May 14, 2006

Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

At the Bagus Gran Cyber Café customers rent so-called media immersion pods. It's not just a solo pursuit; pods for couples, are available too.

ALL cities takes a toll, and at times all city dwellers have to take their leave. When life in Istanbul gets too stressful, people can head to the baths. In Rio there's the beach. In Tokyo, though, the antidote to urban overload is more of the same. In the world's most media-saturated city, people take a break by checking themselves into media immersion pods: warrens cluttered with computers, TV's, video games and every other entertainment of the electronic age.

The Bagus Gran Cyber Cafés are Tokyo's grand temples of infomania. Situated well above retail level, on the odd floor number where in Manhattan you might find tarot readers or nail salons, these establishments contain row after row of anonymous cubicles. At first glance the spread looks officelike, but be warned: these places are drug dens for Internet addicts.

The first Gran Cyber Café opened in 1999. Today there are 10, serving some 5,000 people a day. Each has a slightly different orientation — some are geared to teenagers, some to salarymen — but the atmosphere is the same throughout the franchise: equal parts lending library, newsstand, arcade, Kinko's and youth hostel. An inspired extension of the basic Internet cafe, the Gran Cyber Cafés shift their meaning the more you study them, as if by a trick of their trademark low light.

Sometimes they look like nothing special, only marginally cooler than carrels you might find at a college library. But at other times, especially late at night, they seem visionary, an architectural realization of the social and personal life of the future.

"The Japanese love liminal spaces and gray zones," explained Con Isshow, a writer who has published widely on youth culture, including a collection of letters by abused children called "Letters to Japan's Worst Parents."

"In both the anonymity and role-playing games on offer at the Gran Cyber Café, you don't have to exist in tight social norms," Mr. Isshow told me. "Your identity can be in flux. You go to these places not to present yourself, but to lose yourself. Lose your name, your position, your pride."

Mr. Isshow spoke through a translator, but here he introduced some English: "No-face-man, no-ID-man, no-pride-man."

Although the services offered by Bagus, a company that also runs billiard halls, karaoke dens and spas, are aboveboard, the Gran Cyber Cafés are enshrouded in the urgent, furtive atmosphere of a hot-sheet motel. Eyes averted, customers sign in, head to the library of entertainment options, and load up on fashion magazines, video games and DVD's of "24" as if stocking up on Jim Beam. Then they beetle-brow it to their solitary pods.

What they do there is up to them. Some people channel-surf. Others trade stocks. You can download music, read novels, watch pornography, play video games, have sex, go to sleep.

According to Mr. Isshow, Japan's "petit iede," or little runaways, come for downtime, free lattes and smoothies, and, at some branches, showers. They use the places as trial separations from home — staying a few hours, overnight or a few days, long enough to scare their parents. (A "night pack" allows use of the pod from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. for about $10; some places sell toothbrushes and underwear too.) Periodically the management will remind a customer that the cafe is not a hotel, but above all Bagus respects people's privacy.

ON a recent afternoon, at around 5:30, I visited the Gran Cyber Café in the Shinjuku neighborhood for the first time, to read e-mail and visit a news site or two. Checking in, I was assigned to pod 16-A.

I loved 16-A the instant I saw it. I closed the door, slipped into a low-slung leatherette seat and surveyed the all-you-can-eat tech feast, which includes VHS and DVD players, satellite and regular television on a Toshiba set, PlayStation 2, Lineage II and a Compaq computer loaded with software, all the relevant downloads and hyperspeedy Internet. In the nearby library were thousands of comic books, magazines and novels. On the desk was a menu of oddball snacks, like boiled egg curry and hot sandwich tuna.

The atmosphere is airless and hot, with a permanent cloud of cigarette smoke. Over all the effect is of a low-wattage, low-oxygen casino.

When I spoke to Japanese cultural critics about the Gran Cyber Cafés, most gave high-flown theoretical accounts of their appeal. But Takami Yasuda, a professor at the School of Informatics and Sciences at Nagoya University who writes about virtual reality, shrugged. "I do not know exactly why people, young guys in particular, love to stay in such a dark place," he said.

I don't know exactly why I stayed either. But 10 books, two DVD's, seven magazines, two newspapers and a video game later, I found that eight hours had elapsed.

On my second visit I brought Shizu Yuasa, a married 31-year-old Japanese friend who stays overnight at Gran Cyber Cafés whenever she wants time to herself.

Shizu, the director of 2DK, an arts and media production company, is an avid reader of the Japanese graphic novels known as manga. But because she can read one in about 15 minutes, she doesn't believe in buying them. So she heads to the Bagus shelves and picks out 20 or so.

Around 8 p.m. the place filled up with a reticent and largely male crowd of loners. One nameless man told me he comes on breaks from work, to read the sports news. Naomi Iwasaki, a 28-year-old manager of an Internet portal site, said he was there to read manga. Two boys with hair dyed strawberry blond companionably watched their screens: one was tuned to a cooking show, the other to Yahoo.

Back in the stacks I met Reiko Ishii, a 25-year-old student at Hosei University who lives with her parents in Tokyo. She had tea-colored hair, wore a horn-shaped amulet around her neck, and dressed in the clingy style of early Nicole Richie. She told me she comes to Bagus often, but I was the only other customer she had ever spoken to. There are so few places, she said, where a woman can go out alone, late at night, without having to be sociable. I asked if she'd ever spent the night.

"Sure," she said, looking unfazed. "My parents know I stay here, and it's fine with them." She retreated to her pod. I went to mine too, hit the button that changed the keyboard from Chinese characters to QWERTY, and answered some e-mail.

Shizu was catching up on manga. One was "The Monetary System of Osaka," a left-wing chronicle of graft and usury among the suits of Japan's second city. Another was "Inu," or "Dog," by Haruko Kashiwagi. It's considered clever, fairly high-toned and mainstream, which is surprising because, in part, it's about a woman who has sex with her dog.

The extensive manga library also includes pornography for every taste. But sex at the Gran Cyber Café is not just in the fiction. All around me, couples were making out. Some were watching sex videos. They seemed blasé. Still, in the cubicles that seat two, the walls are a little lower, and the seats don't have a massage option. Meanwhile other customers have taken a more professional approach. The Japanese Web site Tanteifile.com published an article about a freelance prostitute — a "delivery health" girl — who moved into a Gran Cyber Café after her workplace was raided.

Shizu and I got tea and calpis, a sweet, summery drink, and returned to our pod. I leafed through teenage fashion magazines while a Japanese movie about gay samurai, "Mayonaka no Yaji-san Kita-san," played. Shizu, in the meantime, checked out Mixi, the Japanese Friendster. Some people, I had been told, use the site to communicate with other customers who might be just a few pods away, to communicate without having to introduce themselves in person.

Finally an attractive 30-something couple, Kaori Karasawa and Naoya Ohada, settled in the pod across from us. "Will this article be on the Internet?" Ms. Karasawa asked me. "People at the office don't really know we're dating."

"But now they will," Mr. Ohada said, laughing.

He appeared eager to impress her; he held forth about manga, while she listened. They Googled subjects that came up in conversation, showing each other favorite sites, using the Internet as a kind of third party in their relationship: chaperon, entertainment, common ground. Over their pod the light at the Gran Cyber Café seemed not dim but soft, flattering, romantic.

CHECKING out wasn't going to be easy. I had come to appreciate the shared solitude the Gran Cyber Café provides, as well as the fast, infallible Internet connection.

Hidenori Kimura, a sociologist who writes about intercultural encounters, said he believes the Gran Cyber Cafés fulfill a deep and persistent cultural longing. The Japanese system of competition for education, career and social esteem, Dr. Kimura explained, forces young people to obsess over self-presentation, which costs them both fantasy and anonymity, the privileges of childhood. What Japanese young people want, in his view, are opportunities to be free of their social status.

"Traditionally," he explained, "tea ceremonies and festivals have been fulfilling this role of depriving people of their social status and thus help them become 'nobody.' Tea ceremonies deprived the feudal elites of their status and made them just a person enjoying tea ceremony and tea, while festivals among farmers offered an enclave of anarchy during the festivals where they were free of norms and rules of feudal eras."

The Gran Cyber Cafés now serve this purpose, he said. "Nobody cares what you do, which enables you to be absorbed in whatever fantasy you want to indulge in through Net surfing, Web games or manga. Yet you can satisfy your timid desire to belong." Staying in the Gran Cyber Cafés, he concluded, is now part of jibun-sagashi, or the search for the true self.

Nevertheless there's something a little shameful about spending a solo hour, or two, or seven, on a wanton media bender. It was in Japan that I first heard the word "infomania," a 2005 coinage by Hewlett-Packard, whose study last May showed that compulsive e-mailing and text-messaging do more damage to the I.Q. than regular marijuana use. But, as I read about the study in my pod, I came to doubt that such warnings would ever make people temper their infomaniac ways; maybe these are the I.Q.'s we're stuck with now.

And, really, what's so wrong with getting lost on the Internet; watching soccer or baseball on satellite television; devouring Us Weekly or Time Asia; and organizing solo marathons of Tim Burton or Kurosawa movies? The craving for media sprees runs deep, and, like so many Internet-era developments, Gran Cyber Cafés seem to answer an almost carnal need for uninterrupted access to pixels and screens and Web sites and instant-messaging and iTunes. And when that need is satisfied, you can always return to life in the city, at least for a while.

Stickam - all in one media tool

What's Stickam?

wow. Gotta stop reading these high level techie blogs, they keep leading me to really cool things that I dont really need to know about.

stick live video on your webpage anywhere.

UPDATE: of course, no sooner than I hit submit, I find another one, looks just like it: http://www.videoegg.com/

ESPN's Talk Derby To Me

ESPN.com - TRAVEL - Talk Derby to Me: The Infield Experience

By Grellan Harty
Special to ESPN SportsTravel





For most sports fans, spring does not truly arrive until the crack of the bat is heard on Opening Day or a golfer is seen addressing his putt on Amen Corner. But in Louisville, spring comes a little late. You know the cliché: the best things in life are worth waiting for. Well, if you're a native Louisvillian, like myself, that wait pays big -- like 100-1 longshot big -- the first weekend in every May.

Of course, I'm talking about the Kentucky Derby, an event every sports fan should experience at least once. Wondering what it's like to be there? Not on Millionaire's Row, mind you. We're talking about joining the masses on the infield, where the real action is. Look no further -- this local is here to give you a primer built on a lifetime of marinating in all things Derby.

It starts when your first-grade class picks the winners on the Friday before Derby. It continues when you're asked to carry the legs of an entire hog to be roasted during one of the epic Derby parties that people host at their homes all over Louisville. It stays strong as you get your driver's license and try to make it to as many of the ancillary Derby events -- concerts, 5-mph steamboat races down the Ohio River, parades, food festivals, hole-in-one contests, you name it -- as possible. And it breaks out into a full gallop when you see those Twin Spires in the distance and realize you are about to, for the first time, DO DERBY!

Keep in mind, these words won't do Derby justice, but then again, unless you're sharing a fifth of Old Granddad and sunscreen with the good Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (R.I.P. and Mahalo, Good Doctor) while watching cops in riot gear break up a fight involving six girls in the infield, nothing really will.

With that said, let's saddle up!

Derby: That's it: "Derby." Not "Kentucky Derby" -- that's like calling Pele by his full name. If you have to explain which Derby you're talking about, you might as well go to an OTB. Nothing will make you stand out like a fat jockey more than saying "Kentucky Derby" at Churchill Downs. For savvy vets, it's just "Derby." The "Kentucky Derby" represents the greatest two minutes in sports. "Derby" represents the best day in sports. Oh, and when you get to town, you'll be in Louavull, not Louisville.

Infield: What Bourbon Street is to Mardi Gras, the infield is to Derby. Churchill Downs and its moneymen have seen fit to raise the entry cost to $40, but that hasn't stopped approximately 70,000 of your closest friends and relatives -- and believe me, a few too many of the infield denizens are related -- from filing in every year. It even has a Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome feel to it (minus the awful Tina Turner theme song). While the moneyed crowd with their blazers and elaborate hats hobnob on the other side of the track, they file the unwashed throngs of people under the track and into the infield. For most people, the memory of that rush they feel as they walk beneath the track, high-fiving people they've never met before in a tunnel... well, that's the last thing they'll remember.

In my heyday, it cost $20 to get into the infield, and once you got in, you made a mad dash to the...

Third Turn: I don't know the history behind it, but for years the under-30 set has occupied the Third Turn. If you want to catch the 42-year-old grandmother wearing a "Talk Derby to Me" tank top, you'll need to find another turn. The Third Turn is all about newbies passed out by race 4, collegians catching up with old high school classmates before passing out by race 7, and the post-college crowd drawing on all of the above by the Derby.

It's always fun to try to guess the time of the Utter Depravity Point of Inflection. It's that priceless 25 minutes when the crowd goes from a bit too giddy (this can be seen in shirtless guys giving simultaneous "whoooo-hooos" and hugs to other shirtless guys) to just downright lewd (this can be heard in constant demands for, ah, "mammalian exhibitions"). When you hear those requests, you might as well throw down a $20 on the nudity and lewdity exacta, because the crowd has made the turn.

Everybody has his or her favorite "Third Turn Moment." Is my favorite moment when the cops in riot gear stormed the nearby fort made entirely of coolers (apparently a group of frat guys had used Fort Igloo to stage Operation Fruit Toss, hucking citrus in every direction)? Nah. It had to be the time I saw a long-lost buddy from grade school being wheeled around the infield in the back of grocery cart! If he was awake, he wasn't letting on. How somebody "smuggles" a Kroger Kart into the infield is a great question. An even better question is what my old buddy was doing with a sick sunburn and two massive gold chains around his neck.

Coolers: See, the infield has this rule. If you want to get pie-eyed with the ponies, you'll do it on their terms... or at least in theory. Not content with taking $40 out of your wallet, they'd also like you to pay a pretty penny for alcohol -- $8 a beer. Being the nice people that Churchill Downs are, though, they let you bring in your own food. So every year, with the amount of time, ingenuity and expertise usually reserved for bong repair and nanoscience labs, Derby-goers find ways of sneaking alcohol in via their coolers.

The go-to method is to put ice in the cooler, pour two handles of vodka and voilà -- "melted ice!" Another oldie is to spike all manner of fruit with liquor. There are few things better than seeing the inebriated unaware of orange quarters still lodged in their gums. So while the "No Alcohol" rule, like so many well-intentioned ordinances, sounds good in theory, in practice it results in Kappas Gone Wild by 4:00 p.m... and for the record, they've been going wild in the infield long before digital video cameras came around.

The Race: Ummm... you won't see it. Not if you are in the infield anyway. Heck, most people in the infield don't even know it's going on. You'll hear some screaming once the race begins, but by that point, you'll just think it's another fight, or maybe the crowd's reaction when they found out they just ran out of Mint Juleps. If you're really ambitious, you can follow the screaming -- much like the crowd doing the Wave, only with cheers instead of hands -- and keep a rough gauge of where the horses are. But consider yourself warned: if you want to see the horses on Derby day, don't do the infield. When the bathroom line is longer than the betting line, you know where the infield's priorities lie.

Mint Julep: You really can't smuggle a Mint Julep in, but you can bring some "gas for that fire," as they say. Churchill Downs makes thousands of the signature drink on Derby Day, but sometimes they aren't afraid to short-arm the bourbon bottle. That's why it's imperative to bring your own Action Flask to grease the gears. And for the love of God, nothing screams "Rookie!!!" like the guy/gal who keeps each souvenir glass that the Mint Julep comes in. While the glass is nice and lists every previous Derby winner, it also marks you as a first-timer... and someone to avoid like the plague in the betting line ("How much would I make on the white horse if he comes in second?"). So if you want to keep a glass, fine, but don't be that person walking around with six.

If you feel the need to follow the races and go to the infield, here's what I'd suggest. Pick your horses the night before. First thing you do when you get to the infield is place your bets. File those tickets in a dark place in your wallet. Then go do as the Louisvillians do. Don't worry, you still won't see any horses, but you've bet on the race and you can watch the replays the next day on TV. Then make one final bet with your friends on who won't make it home with the group you came in. No group of people has ever gone to the infield and left with the same group intact. You might have less people as you leave the infield. Heck, you might have picked up some more, but it won't be the same group you started with. Guaranteed.

MORE DERBY:
Millionaire's Row: Half the fun of Derby for me is to get detached from the hullabaloo and take it all in from a distance. Don't get me wrong, I love Louisville. I really do. But if Hip decided to attack the axis of Fashion and Fame, the 'Ville would be nowhere near the frontlines. And that's fine with me.

But as with most places, there is a certain segment -- with the local media happily throwing gas on the bonfire -- that's always trying to prove just how cosmopolitan Louisville is. That's where Millionaire's Row comes in. It's the level on the homestretch of Churchill Downs reserved for the Equinati -- owners, trainers, etc. It's also where they put the famous people. The local media love to fawn over who shows up each year. It's Louisville's collective, misguided litmus test of popularity.

Sometimes it's a hit (meaning relevant, famous people), with the likes of Jack Nicholson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Halle Berry and P. Diddy all stopping by in the last five years or so, but more often it's a murder-me row of passed-over Hollywood Squares. I'll take Delta Burke for the win!

For every Nicholson, there's a Don Johnson, Dixie Carter, and that guy from Simon & Simon (no, not the blonde one -- the bald one). Basically, it's CBS's primetime lineup circa '89. But as pathetic as it is to see the media breathlessly asking where Dixie Carter got her hat, it still makes me laugh. In case you don't believe me, go here. Scroll down to "Tammy Faye Messner." Play.

6:00 a.m.: What 4:20 p.m. is to stoners, 6:00 a.m. is to Louisvillians during Derby Week. 6:00 a.m. is closing time for bars. So, for that one week, the bars don't really even close. It's a free-for-all. All the good bands, or at least as good as bands are today, show up that week as well. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if My Morning Jacket decided to rent out an 18-wheeler, knock out a side and just drive around the 'Ville rocking the unsober masses this year.

If that doesn't yank your chain, there's probably a Nickelback/3 Doors Down double-bill at Phoenix Hill Tavern that will. It might make perfect sense to stop by and mock that show, but as I can painfully attest -- by some weird alchemy of goodtime spring vibes, live music, a Coors Party Ball, Tevas and Derby -- what you set out to ridicule now has you in the front row giving that wavy, pointy finger to the guitarist as he rips off a bad (but at the time, soooooooooo gooooooooood) solo.

Pendennis Club: Louisville's answer to Bushwood Country Club. It's a club that for 364 days a year stinks of old money, and where drinking before lunch isn't necessarily taboo. But for that 365th day a year, the Pendennis Club throws the best post-Derby bash. You won't see J-Lo, Giselle or Colin Farrell being ushered in, but in keeping with the Millionaire's Row spirit of "hey, we're somewhat hip!" you will get all the reality TV show retreads.

The Oaks: If Derby is the horse race for America, Oaks (held the day before) is the horse race for Louisville. Back in the day, Oaks used to be a little Friday of racing before all hell broke loose the next day. People were more subdued and congenial at Oaks, if for no other reason than any antics were sure to be seen by a neighbor or cousin. With the riff-raff from Mardi Gras and Springer Break still making their way to Louisville, the locals knew to get to Churchill Downs for all the trappings of Derby before Churchill Downs' parking lot was awash in out-of-state plates.

But somewhere along the way, someone let out the 'Ville's secret (probably a Hoosier) and the Oaks blew up. It used be that the infield was opened up only for Derby, but now they open it up on Oaks too... and it's packed.

Two Minutes To Post: The best tip I can give you for Derby Day (besides praying to Helios that he bless the day with plentiful rays) is to just let it happen... because it will. Countless throngs have shown up in Louisville that weekend only to try to do too much, in too little time. It's hard not to get caught up in the frenzy and bedlam that makes Derby so great, but if you can pull it together, take that minute or two to just look around. The sun beaming down, the women regaling in their hats, the men in their blazers (or no shirts at all if you're in the infield), the old-timers trading tips by the paddock and basically the camaraderie of over 100,000 people celebrating the biggest party in sports. And there's no better time to have that reflection then when they cue up the biggest tearjerker in the sports jukebox, Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home."

So follow my advice and you can be a winner (or at least place) at this year's Run for the Roses. Derby won't disappoint, it never does.

Oh, and... NEVER BET THE DERBY FAVORITE!

Grellan Harty is, obviously, a Louisville native. He has worked as an editor for NBA.com and FoxSports.com.