Kitty Kats make me happy

It is my birthday this morning and I woke up to find this very nice card. This cat is named Dr. Mao. She is very handsome. Dr. Mao is a friend that my twin brother David introduced me too. Dr. Mao is a good writer. I don't just mean that her handwriting is good...you can tell from her birthday card that it is...but she is also a skillful bilingual poet and novelist. She was a runner up for the Nekotagawa-Sho award for her novel "我が輩は猫である。なんか文句あるのか。” Although my favorite is "あたしの毛を撫でる貴方。 A love story".

I hope you can meet her someday.

Thank you, Dr. Mao. I am glad to know a cat like you.

３６歳になった。もうおやじだ。どう見てもおやじだ。しょうがないな。おやじでがんばる。

Flesh Juice- It's not just for Zombies anymore

When I am back home, I like to start every morning with a glass of Flesh Juice. You can see me enjoying some in this new video. I also talk about natto.

Natto is a popular breakfast food in Japan. It's fermented soybeans , usually mixed with green onions, mustard and some dashi and eaten on rice. It's very tasty for some and unpleasant for others. In my opinion, it is the best rotten bean you can eat. It's very slimy and stringy in a wonderful way. Japanese people love to see foreign visitors eat natto. I hope you will try it someday. You can get it at any Japanese market. Try Nijiya or Mitsuwa if you live in Los Angeles.

I guess Chinese "stinky tofu" is the Chinese equivalent to Natto. I have heard about it but I have never tried it. I think it is probably much more advanced than natto. I have seen photos of stinky tofu and it looks like it might get up and walk away if you try to eat it. I would like to nibble on it someday though.

An Average day in Japan

Whenever I go back home to Japan, I have a little routine. I like to go to certain shops and restaurants in Tokyo before I head to Shimane.

I had a favorite curry restaurant in the Shimokitazawa area of Tokyo called Yumeya. I was sad this trip when I went there and it was gone. It had become a clothing store. But the funny thing is that the store still smelled like curry spice. I think there is a curry ghost who will haunt it forever. If you buy a shirt from that store, maybe you will always have a spicy aroma.

JET LAG IN LA

It's 7am and I have been up already for 3 hours. In some ways it is nice to be up so early. I go outside at 4: 20am and my Los Angles is another planet or the moon. There are no people and almost no sounds. Only cats. I am like an astronaut floating through my neighborhood.

I am 4 days back in Los Angeles and it is a funny feeling. You can be with your friends and family eating Niku-Jaga and looking out at Japan Sea. And then a few hours later walking alone on the Santa Monica pier and watching someone fish for saba before the sun has its chance to rise.

I MADE A TOY.

I was asked to make a work of toy themed art for a show called Omocha de cha cha cha. Omocha means Toy in Japanese. The show is at Cafe Bolivar in Santa Monica and is curated by Kio Griffith from Cafe Mode.

I decided to take a See and Say toy that I found at a garage sale and remake it. A See and Say is a toy where you pull a string and an arrow spins around and stops on an animal, then it makes the song of the animal. Like this " This is a cat....Nyaaaow"

The toy I found had all the animal stickers peeled off, so I made my own drawings of the animals and stuck them on. Maybe a small child will learn about Frogs and Ducks by pulling the string on my toy. That will make me happy. It is also a good refresher course for adults who live in a city and haven't heard these animal's songs in a long time.

Also, they will be showing my "I am Robot film" as part of the exhibit too. It features two good friends of mine who are toys (Raideen and Great Mazinga).

Pay Katsuyuki will also have some new works that I just brought from Japan. They are very handsome home made keychains with individual drawings on them....and cheap :) Remi February will have some work in the show too, but I don't know if she will be at the opening. You had better ask her :)

The opening reception will be on September 12th, from 7-10pm, but I think the work will be up starting this weekend around 8-21.

If you come, please pull the string on my See and Say.

Cafe Bolivar

1741 Ocean Park Blvd

Santa Monica CA 90405

I Am Robot

This is the video I mentioned 2 posts ago in the Flip Video Ultra HD post. A friend of mine told me about a museum show featuring video installations shot on this camera. I made this video specifically for the museum show. I wrote it on Tuesday , shot the video on Wednesday and Thursday, and edited it on Friday. It took quite a bit of time.

My friends Raideen and Great Mazinga make an appearance in this video. They were my favorite cartoon robots when I was a kid in the 7o's. You can see the theme songs to their anime if you search youtube.

I'm hoping to make some more movies like this if people seem to like this one.

I had never done a short film like this before. It was very fun to make, and it was a story I had always wanted to tell. It's based on true events.

When I was young, I did pray to the Gods that I would become a robot. But I'm pretty sure I never did. If my wish had come true, this video shows what might have happened.

Are you a robot?

Camping at San Onofre Beach in San Diego

This past weekend, I went camping at San Onofre. It's a beautiful area with miles of beach and nice, friendly waves. It's not too far from the famous surf break called Trestles.

As I was getting ready to leave in the morning, I stopped by the restroom. Two young guys were standing out front and as they passed they said to me "Ken-San". Once in a while someone will recognize me from my youtube videos and say hello to me. It's always nice to meet other youtube viewers. I waved at them and smiled.

When I came out of the rest room they were still there. Thinking that they might be studying Japanese, I spoke to them in Japanese and they replied "Ken-San" again. Okay, I thought, I guess they don't understand Japanese. Then one of them said "Very-Ken-san". I wasn't sure what he meant exactly, and he had a strong accent of some kind....and then his friend said...."Yes, Very handsome". "I like you very much."

It turned out he wasn't saying Ken-San. He was saying "handsome".

I don't think I looked too handsome that day, but it was very kind of him to say so.

My New FLIP Video Ultra HD

I bought this new Flip Video Ultra HD pocket video camera for my trip to El Salvador. I didn't want to take my usual camera, a Canon HV 20, because I was afraid it would break or get lost on the trip.

I named my camera Jacob. Jacob was about $200 at Best Buy.

He was really fun to use because you can just keep him in your pocket, and whenever you see something funny or meet someone intersting, you can take him out and film it. I plan to take Jacob everywhere.

My latest video of El Salvador was shot all on Jacob the Video camera, except for the surf/bodyboard shots. The only problems with the camera are that it has no image stabilization so it's very shaky when you walk or move, and the microphone is not that strong, so you can't hear someone if they are more than a few feet away.

Jacob holds 2 hours of footage and can take AA batteries. You connect Jacob with a USB port and the videos come up as MP4 files. Then I just put them into imovie and edit. It's very easy.

I've been doing experiments with this camera and have made a little short film video with me and my robot friends Raideen and Great Mazinga. I'll be posting it up soon:)

Ken Tanaka Loves You!

Goodbye.

New work from my friend Pay Katsuyuki

I have known Pay Katusyuki for many years. He is one of my favorite artists and musicians and he and his music appear in many of my videos. He is also a "Ramen-Man" and works as a Ramen Chef. So he is a triple-artist...ramen, music, and paint.

My 5th video introduces Pay, his work and what I think is his best song. He also appears in videos #16, #38 and #56. And his music appears in many others. I get emails from viewers every week asking how they can get Pay's "Sick of Recorder" CD but unfortunately it is out of print.

I just got a message from Pay saying that he has a new band, so I'm excited to hear his new music. He also has a lot of really handsome new paintings on his blog which I hope you will check out. If you watch the 5th video (linked above) from 2007, you will see that his work has changed and grown a lot since then.

Right now, Pay is looking for a gallery show outside of Japan.

One of the things I like about Pay's paintings is that they are very different from what people in the US expect from modern Japanese art(such as Murakami and Kaikai Kiki artists). Pay works with abstracts and uses experimental mediums, sometimes he puts gauze or donut wrappers into his paintings and creates special textures with them. Some of Pay's work is dark and lonesome feeling, while other pieces have a colorful kind of happiness in them. I don't think I've seen anybody else who paints like Pay-kun.

Pay lives in Nagoya but he sometimes shows his work in the U.S. and Canada. He had work in the garage sale section of my gallery show at Billy Shire Fine Arts and also has shown with Cafemode at Shojin in Little Tokyo. You can currently see one of his pieces on display at

QIO select 11614 West Pico Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90064

Life Inside the Peach

I forgot all about this drawing when I was writing my peach blog below. I think I drew this during peach season last year. I decided not to use it in my show at Billy Shire Fine Arts because some friends I showed it to thought it had a different meaning than I intended. They thought the peach looked like something other than a peach. I was very surprised. I guess I'm not very good at drawing peaches yet :)

おばけ桃が行く

I love a peach.  When I was little I read a book called "Obake momo ga iku" about a little boy who finds a giant peach and lives inside of it with some friendly insects. I don't know what the English name of the book is...Monster Peach?   I always wanted to live inside of a peach.  I still do.

Peach is the perfect fruit.  It's soft and fuzzy on the outside like a caterpillar.  I think it's the happiest fruit of all.  I wouldn't mind to be a peach someday.  

It is summer in Los Angeles and there are peaches, nectarines and apricots at the farmers market by my apartment.  I buy big bags full of them.  Once i ran out of farmers market peaches and I bought some peaches at the super market store. But these peaches were terrible...they looked very handsome but inside was sandy, like eating a bite of the desert.  They weren't sweet or juicy like my friends from the farmers market.   

I felt terrible for those super market peaches....sitting all grouped together, trying to look their best, but knowing that they would never make anybody happy.  I think the American supermarket is bad for peaches, pressuring them to look round and smooth and perfect, but not putting any value on what is inside.  Those peaches look lovely, but they have very low self-esteem.  

Maybe this is just in Los Angeles. 

I would like to save those peaches if I could, but I'm not sure how....like that other book...ライ麦畑でつかまえて。。。(Catcher in a field of rye?)  where they catch the kids before they become adults....I want to be the Catcher in the peach field...saving these peaches from going to the supermarket...when they are too young to know　any better.

それじゃ

白桃かってこようと。

Hello! It's me Ken Tanaka

Hello Everyone. This is my first post in this blog.
I haven't been making videos lately because I was traveling to El Salvador. I will have a video about it soon. I got back last week and then got busy getting ready for a new art gallery show by Cafemode. The show is at Shojin in the Little Tokyo part of Los Angeles. They were nice enough to have me as the featured artist this time. I will have about 40 pieces in this show. Other participating artists are my friend Remi February (She is very handsome), Mari (from the Ken Tanaka meets a Japanese Dominatrix video) and curator Kio Griffith.

The show will be going on till September 16th so if you are in Los Angeles or will be visiting , I hope you can stop by.

The opening of the show was last night and it was very nice. Many of my friends and youtube viewers came and I was very happy.

Now that the show is up, it's time for me to go back to my search for Jonathan and Linda Smith. Maybe they will find this blog some how.