In the last post, I was a bit hard on Hakone, defining it narrowly by its chain restaurant highways and (expensive!) outlet mall. On Saturday morning, however, just as we were about to head to Kamakura, the weather turned sunny, and Mt. Fuji popped out of its cloudy cocoon to finally give us a taste of the city’s iconic scenery. As we rounded the corners of windy mountain roads, the bus would explode into cheers of “Wow!” everytime Fuji’s peak came into view. It’s fair to say that Hakone without Mt. Fuji is like Vegas with the casinos closed up.

We filmed road scenes during most of our voyage across Kanagawa to Kamakura. This project turned out to be “Japanese driving boot camp” for me. I was ostensibly hired for my background in bilingual journalism, but the Infiniti is literally the “vehicle” that drives the plot of the film along. So that meant many hours behind the wheel — through super highways, nauseating mountain roads, paths between rice patties, Kamakura one-lane backstreets overflowing with Sunday tourists, and Hayama beach roads full of classic cars. I learned the power of the hazard signal, which magically allows any driver in Japan to stop wherever he/she likes, even the middle of the street. I also became incredibly dependent upon the Infiniti’s side-view and back cameras, which were not a feature included in cars when I was growing up in Northwest Florida back in the late 20th century.

In Kamakura, we interviewed Abe Shape & Design‘s Hiroshi Abe — one of Japan’s first surfers. He and his friends, later chronicled in the fictional film Inamura Jane, basically invented surfing amongst themselves with only the smallest trickle of influence from the West. He made his first board in 1963 after seeing a photo of an American G.I. holding up a retro “log,” with the board length and width extrapolated from the height of the surfer.

Abe has been making boards ever since, now working with nationally-protected craftsmen in Aizu Mishima-cho, Fukushima to make surfboards out of kiri (paulownia) wood. The craftsmen first have to construct incredibly complicated hollow boxes with the wood, which Abe then shapes into luxurious longboards. They retail for at least ¥2,000,000, making them likely the most expensive in the world.

Like with Sano’s bikes, Abe says the wood actually has properties which make it well-suited for long-term usage on the waves. But in terms of aesthetics, Abe’s understated design, which emphasizes the original color of the wood, turns the board into objêt territory. My favorite detail was the fin where Abe created a herringbone pattern out of alternating natural wood grains.

The board is a good metaphor for the entire Shonan area — a mix of laid-back hippie beach culture, giant villas from wealth old money families, and world-famous historical destinations. Ever since Shintaro Ishihara’s controversial Taiyo no Kisetsu (Season of the Sun), the region has also represented a strong alternative to Tokyo’s over serious suited-up world of adult responsibility and capital accumulation. The beach is not just a weekend destination, but a locus for liberal values not usually associated with “Japan.” That being said, Ishihara is now governor of Tokyo, and Abe’s surfing lifestyle perfectly melds with the old Japanese craftsmen tradition. Shonan is no longer just the home for sun-kissed play but an integral part of Japan’s rich pop cultural tradition.

Learn more about the project at www.facebook.com/infiniti (click on the Photos tab) or www.infiniti.com.

After today I can put “light stunt driving” on my increasingly-nonsensical resume. We spent the day filming the Infiniti cruising around the cloudy mountain roads near Hakone and Ashi no Ko lake, parts of which required me to navigate the car through perilous curves and tricky situations. At high speeds, I had to drive the car within two feet of a van containing a camera crew hanging out the back, which ended up also letting us test the impact radar. That warning sound meant I was in range of the perfect shot. I will sleep well knowing I successfully managed not to crush anyone’s legs.

The only appropriate soundtrack for this work was Big Star’s Radio City, which I chose for the rock’n'roll but soon discovered was a good fit due to the substantial number of lyrics about automobiles. Later on I went with Shugo Tokumaru’s Exit which worked better for the lush, gothic drag outside of Ashi no Ko.

Just one week ago I earned my Japanese license (and yes, Japanese authorities, purchased the magnetic stick-on “wakaba” virgin driver mark for ¥600), and thanks to this driving school I am being paid to attend, I feel like a hardened semi-professional. Soon I will be as expert as the locals who like to ride around with no headlights in the fog, whip around blind curves at 50 kph and generally drive down the middle of the pavement with no grasp of the “lane” concept.

I have never understood the appeal of Hakone, mostly due to the silly pirate boat tourist traps of Ashi no Ko and the strip malls of Gotemba. Maybe it was the weather when we got here but I immediately decided that the window view outside of my room at “Super Hotel” — which does for business hotels what Hanamaru does for udon — was the “saddest in all Japan.” Gotemba Premium Outlets, for all its high priced luxury goods, embodies the suburban consumer ennui at heart in the pejorative use of “American.”

But we are here to shoot ryokan, and when you actually go inside, the area starts to makes sense. The rooms are designed to not just be an escape from fast-paced Tokyo life but also the other customers. “Hotels” are relatively social, with the bars and lobbies and afternoon teas, but ryokan are focused around the indulgence of true privacy. Sure, some of this is for the people who don’t want to be seen: the VIPs need their own special entrance, and the halls are intentionally labyrinthine to make sure guests who are there with women other than their wives do not have to face public judgment. But even the casual guest profits from this well-curated sensation of isolation. The modern-day luxury ryokan surely demonstrates that the Japanese, like everyone else, put a premium on the ability to get away from the madding crowd.

Learn more about the project at www.facebook.com/infiniti or www.infiniti.com.

The original idea was to blog our activities on this two-week German-language road trip around Japan with relative frequency, but with twelve-hour shoots and a mild head cold, I have found little time to recap the day in WordPress form.

Everything has changed, however, thanks to the power of technology. We are currently somewhere between Aichi and Shizuoka Prefectures, connecting to the internet through a wireless router in our “location bus,” which I am pretty sure is not an English word. The only highlight of nighttime highway driving is the odd conglomerations of love hotels in remote areas, but when waiting for those, I can now look up production notes on late 1980s R.E.M. albums via Wikipedia.

We sadly just left Kyoto where we filmed Mizra Jeans and some of their favorite local craftsmen. Just hours ago we watched a Japanese indigo dyer open up a big vat of fermenting indigo and drop in some silk on bamboo sticks. The goop is a brown-green, and it delivers a putrid-looking earth tone to the yarn, but in a magic moment of oxidization, this color suddenly explodes into electric blue. Japanese indigo in this organic old-fashioned fermented style is only practiced by 4-5 places in Japan, but can provide a unique and rich blue that essentially never fades. An experimental batch of jeans made with this real Japanese indigo worn by the master dyer looked brand new even after heavy usage, but unfortunately these would retail at ¥100,000.

Mizra Jeans’ clothing uses a lot of these old-school processing techniques: charcoal dyeing, etc. Everytime I get to meet designers from these small, detail-obsessed Japanese labels, I am reminded how little the garments themselves are able to explicitly say about their production process. Maybe it’s a chore to have to study up on every T-shirt purchase but it’s likely that delving deeper into the manufacturing history will accompany a post-materialist future. This doesn’t just meant production ethics but just no longer taking the miraculous birth of a complicated product for granted.

A lot of time in Kyoto was also spent doing very “Kyoto”-things, including driving an Infiniti up to the top of Kiyomizudera, which we are likely the first and last people to ever attempt. I personally got to drive around the scenic backstreets of Gion as well as do loops around Heian Jinja. I picked up some super cheap Hemingway in Book Off on Sanjo. We had a nice meal last night at Sarasa Mange — one of many old Kyoto establishments refurbished into trendy cafes, as an alternative to being completely demolished.

Heading to Hakone at the moment to film two ryokan over three days. While ryokan impressarios are not exactly “craftsmen,” there are a few similarities that we can discuss at a later time. I also have a feeling that we will be enjoying one of the great national pastimes of the Japanese people: the Gotemba outlet mall.

Learn more about the project at www.facebook.com/infiniti or www.infiniti.com.

How many shipbuilders are currently in Japan who make luxury yachts completely out of wood? One: Sano Magic. How much demand is there for eight-figure (¥x0,000,000) wooden luxury yachts in 2010? Not much, unfortunately.

But the good news is that master builder Sueshiro Sano is applying himself to a completely different mode of transportation: bicycles made from mahogany. The frame is wood, the seat is wood, the tireswheels are wood. Objectively speaking, these are probably the most beautiful bikes in the world. Half of his customers buy the wooden bicycle and promptly hang it up on a wall as art. But Sano isn’t just using the wood to prove an aesthetic point. His bicycles are nearly as light as carbon-fiber and are also apparently easier to ride due to the physical properties of the wood. As you pedal, the wooden frame actually kicks out force that lifts your foot up. Scientists at Ibaraki University want to do lab tests on the bikes, but their insurance won’t cover the costs.

So that brings us to the bad news for everyone hoping to get their hands on one of these: Sano Magic’s mahogany bikes are very, very expensive, as much as a relatively nice new car. And since Sano builds them by hand using his proprietary production techniques, he can only make three bikes a year. He’s booked with orders until 2012. But as he told me, he barely makes money from them. “If I only cared about making money, I would never have started making these bicycles.” (Sano believes that the craftsman way of living, taught to him by his grandfather, is to not think about money at all.) You may not be buying one of his bikes soon, but as a consolation, you can purchase one of his wooden tireswheels. They are only ¥100,000 a piece.

Sano is easily one of the world’s greatest wood-workers. His secret: He’s the ninth-generation of a shipbuilding family. You know how Beck is a musical prodigy because his dad is this guy who’s worked on 450 gold and platinum albums? Sano is like that times nine. Back in the early 19th century, when your ancestors were foraging for food and hoping their descendants wouldn’t waste their time “online” reading blogs, Sano’s ancestors were building solid hinoki fishing vessels in the Edo Period.

This heritage makes Sano the most stereotypical “craftsman” of this Infiniti Brand Journey project. He’s a guy whose entire life has literally revolved around his particular craft. At 16, he had already built this baby. His wife’s wedding band is made from a nearly translucent mahogany often mistaken for tortoise shell. The only bittersweet subtext to Sano’s overall inspirational story is that he’s probably going to be the very last generation of wooden shipbuilders in Japan. He has two daughters, the oldest of whom is “really into mathematics,” but they are not likely to follow in his footsteps. We can at least celebrate his existence while he is alive, so spread the word to all your DIY and biking friends about his bicycles. Wood, ironically enough, is the future.

Tomorrow: We film Flower Robotics! I am ready to see some robots in motion.

Learn more about the project at www.facebook.com/infiniti or www.infiniti.com.

As part of the Infiniti Brand Journey, we visited the Daikanyama offices of Flower Robotics yesterday where we had an hour-long chat with charismatic founder Tatsuya Matsui. The company is a bit notorious for having everything in the office — including the workers’ wardrobes — limited to simple monotones. This being the most chic part of Tokyo though, it was hard to discern the idiosyncrasy. Matsui was wearing a slim navy blue suit, white shirt and navy silk tie. His robots — including Posy and Palette — are molded in white and black. I do not recommend wearing patchwork madras on an official visit — you will not just scorch the atmosphere but look like a dweeb.

Off the bat, I mentioned common criticisms of Japanese robots: the creations are mere “puppets,” karakuri ningyo that move on their own but require human beings to pull the strings. And many high-profile robots — cough, Asimov-minus-the-v, cough — seem more about fulfilling PR roles than functional needs.

Matsui’s approach takes both of these issues into account. Flower Robotics is first and foremost a business, so the company’s aim is to create robots that cater to particular demands. The robots also utilize a certain amount of artificial intelligence to make decisions on their own. The best example of this is the aforementioned “moving mannequin” Palette, who stands in fashion brand display windows and remembers which poses most appeal to onlookers.

In the comment section of the last post, we talked about Japanese craftsmanship quickly descending into “Orientalist discourse,” in the sense that using the Japanese word “shokunin” (職人) suddenly religates the universal human desire of creation to a mystical, Eastern framework transcending Western rational understanding. There is also the issue of self-Orientalization, where Japanese designers work to explain their unique philosophies and decision-making in the context of unchanging Japanese traditions.

From my brief time with him, Matsui sounds as if he is more influenced by modernity (and Steve Jobs!) than karakuri, but there are particular parts of the Japanese design mindset that do seem to be culturally-bound. He and the other craftsmen are very interested in concrete objects — i.e., hardware. There are many economic-structuralist explanations for the failure of Japanese companies to master software, web design, E-books, net culture and user interfaces, but without going full-blown cultural-essentialist, can we not say at this point that there is very “Japanese” predilection for creating actual objects rather than virtual ones? We do not necessarily have to explain this through animism — there are kami everywhere, even in your Walkman — but we can probably safely say, people who love the concept of physical objects tend to be extremely detailed-oriented and obsessive when it comes to making them. This probably can be said for Steve Jobs and James Dyson too, but that way of thinking has a particularly large number of adherents in Japan.

In the case of Flower Robotics, the point is never about raw materialism — the cult of R2-D2 — but the human interaction with the robot. As Japan moves into a post-materialist era — whether due to economic collapse or the Internet age — robots can no longer just be geeky gadgets we lust over. To become a true industrial field, they must be machines seamlessly weaved into our daily lives. On this measure, at least in Japan, Matsui is way ahead of the pack.

Learn more about the project at www.facebook.com/infiniti or www.infiniti.com.