This is a Dutch band called The Essence. Just as bands like Camouflage and Cause & Effect were like, “Shut up, we don’t sound like Depeche Mode! Depeche Mode sounds like us, so shut up or else!”, The Essence shares the same relationship with The Cure. If you didn’t know any better, you would have sworn that this is Robert Smith while listening. So listen to this or else you’re just not cool anymore.
“The Cat”:
“Only for You”:
“Mirage”:
The band isn’t a total ripoff, and the music is not derivative. No plagiarism, just similarity. The music is more post-punk than goth. Maybe a bit of a Creation Records feel to the music? And it’s not like the singer is doing the whole Robert Smith eye makeup thing either. I obtained their first album as mp3 format and burned it onto a CD to listen to in the car. I’ve been listening to it over and over for the past several days and I really like it a lot. It’s as if I’ve discovered some Cure albums I’d never heard before. I first discovered this band about a year ago as it showed up as a YouTube algorithm suggestion and I wish I had known this band 30+ years ago.
Last week, the three of us went to Tokyo to submit a passport application at the US Embassy for Ulan. It was Mayu’s birthday too. Because I could pay for the passport in advance through PayPal, it sped up the process. An appointment is required, which I did online. We were only there for about an hour. We finished there around 10:30 am, then took the subway back to Tokyo Station.
The rest of the time we spent in Tokyo was in the underground shopping area beneath Tokyo Station. There they have Tokyo Character Street, which you can see in the picture above. I covered this place on my site 12 years ago, when I did a photo journal of our trip to Tokyo Sky tree in 2013. Tokyo Character Street is a collection of speciality shops, for Studio Ghibli, Kamen Rider, Ultraman, Rilakkuma, One Piece (I hate that show), etc. It’s changed a lot since then. The Gundam Cafe is gone, and now there is a Harry Potter store, etc.
So these characters are from a comic/anime called Chiikawa. They’re like these adorable RPG characters who supposedly go on quests, but most of the time they are eating bento and drinking tea and doing cute stuff. Ulan loves these characters.
We had lunch at a grilled fish restaurant since the “Ramen Street” area had long lines waiting for those restaurants. It was Mayu’s birthday, so I let her decide where to go. We also had 1,300 yen parfaits after we did more shopping. Tokyo can be a bit expensive!
There were actually two Ghibli-themed stores there. These Porco Rosso punch puppets were at the one featuring high-end merchandise. I ended up buying more stuff for Ulan’s upcoming birthday than for Mayu’s birthday.
There was a Shonen Jump pop-up store where I bought a deck of Spy Family Uno cards.
One store had these neat-looking Evangelion-themed storage containers.
Ulan likes Kirby, although she’s never played a Kirby game before. I got her a pocket towel at the Kirby store.
There is a whole underground shopping mall down there too, which we only barely entered. We went to the Can Do 100 yen shop, Kaldi Coffee, and the Don Quixote snack shop. Looking at the map online, I realize that it is bigger than I thought.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay long in Tokyo as it was a weekday and we had to go back to work and school the next day. We took the 2:40pm shinkansen back home. We had a nice time.
