Well, not all of the street lamps honored Ultraman...  This one is in the shape of his arch-foe, Baltan Seijin!

(Cue the Baltan Seijin laugh to creep out Dave Aikins!  A few of us were doing the laugh and claw arm bobbing motions at the sight of this, much to the strange looks from the residents)

Our tour guide for the Tokyo area shows off our appropriate flag for this visit

Ultraman's presense was everywhere, even this street marker had an actual light-up color timer (not sure if what would happen after three minutes were up).

Even the local Kôban (Japanese Police sub-station) can't escape Ultraman's influence!

(Yeah, I got myself taking the photo)

The Ultraman statue outside of Soshigaya train station (and in front of the Kôban in the photo above)

(The truck driver in the background did a double take at the sight of a large group of gaijin clustered around the statue taking photos)

Let's sing the Ultraman Song! (Again?!?)  Dedication plaque at the base of the statue.

The clouds finally started clearing out above the area, so one last dramatic shot.

The members of G-Tour 2 gather to get ready for the next destination.

Ultraman Jack sees G-Tour 2 off as we head out of Soshigaya's Ultraman Shopping Street in the direction of Setagaya... 

...With the next stop being:

And I'll end it here for now.  ;-)

It'll give Martin a chance to post his photos, and for myself to address any feedback to all this...

I've said this before, but some of the most sucessful franchises in Japanese popular media build upon the original, adding new characters or whole different universes for each succeeding generation of fans to call their own, rather than constantly revamp the original beyond recognition.

Godzilla has gone through numerous visual changes and continuity revamps over the past 57 years, but Toho has been careful to say that the events of original 1954 movie still happened...

Ultraman has had a large number of successors from Nebula M78 over the past 45 years, but he's still iconic face of Tsuburaya Production's franchise, and obviously loved by fans of all ages.  Just wait until we start posting pictures from our visit to the annual Ultraman Festival, or the Ultraman World M78 stores that we found across Japan....  It was enough to make several of us feel really sorry for how Superman has been treated on this side of the Pacific.

Tim O'Neill wrote: What are the best English language translation books that I could track down for this character?

One of the best English-language books about Ultraman, off the top of my head, is August Ragone's hardcover book about the life of Toho SFX master Eiji Tsuburaya:

[Amazon.com Link]

While a good majority of the book deals obviously with Godzilla and the other Toho kaiju pantheon, Ultraman also played a huge part in Tsuburaya's career (as well as his heirs), so he's got some good behind the scenes coverage in the book as well.

I've mentioned this before in the Oxygen Destroyer thread, but we found Godzilla to have faded pretty much into the background as far as  general public awareness goes (and I don't believe the 3/11 earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima Nuclear plant crisis will encourage a revival in Japan anytime soon).  Ultraman however, with the original celebrating his 45th anniversary this year, was just about everywhere in Japan when we visited, and apparently still going strong.