1. A huge percentage of my leisure time over the last month has been spent at hulu.com watching the first 135(!) episodes of a Japanese ninja cartoon called Naruto.
Naruto was (accurately) described to me as Harry Potter, but with ninjas. If that sounds like the sort of thing you’d like, I highly recommend giving it a look-see.
It takes a while to get going — an incredible amount of time is spent hammering home each character’s back story and personality quirks, to the point of it being annoying. (Yes, we get it, Sasuke is moody and unfriendly because his life is dedicated to revenge, Naruto just wants people to acknowledge his worth, and Sakura is in love with Sasuke and lacks self-confidence. WE GET IT. CUT TO THE NINJA BATTLES.)
Eventually the action kicks in, and awesome new details are revealed about the back stories, and everybody fights everybody, and there are ninja dogs, and creepy puppets, and a giant frog with a sword, and reanimated corpses, and so on and so forth. Well worth the wait.
And that’s a nice-guy promise. Believe it! (Inside joke for Naruto nerds.)
2. I’ve crammed so much ninja into my skull recently that I was rewarded this morning with an unburied memory from my childhood: At some point there was a ninja supply store in my neighborhood.
Not a martial arts supply store. Not a Japanese weapons store that had some ninja-related items. A god-damned NINJA SUPPLY STORE. My memory is that children weren’t allowed to go inside without adults, but that I got to go in at least once. I also have a vague impression that my parents disapproved of grown men who called themselves ninjas. Probably because ninjas are semi-magical assassins who run around in masks, heavily armed. In retrospect, my parents were wise.
Possibly not a real ninja.
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Well, this is not exactly in the neighborhood, but I’ve heard it referred to as the only genuine ninja supply store…
http://www.brendanlaisupply.com/
Was the store you remember in Albany?? Possible they moved to SF? Cause this place is awesome and scary.
It was in Albany, on Solano, approximately where Shik Do Rak (the Korean restaurant) is now. I think.
I once took a public speaking class with students from our sister University in Japan, Chubu University. During a speech about ninjas, one of the male students informed us that a ninja can support all of their body weight with two fingers. He then walked over to the open classroom door, pinched the top of the door frame and lifted himself off the ground.
Ninja says come to Paris.
That may not be a real ninja–but he’s really got the outfit down…except the boots…i think they tend to wear slippers. Hope you’re having fun in Pari.
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