Fruit burger

Hamburger topped with half a mango, to be exact. Meeting a demand expressed by nobody, now, at a Freshness Burger near you.

See the Yokohama Triennale, but not on the weekend

Have I mentioned I don't like crowds much? I don't, and I'm sure I have. So I took advantage of my easy-living lifestyle to see the Yokohama Triennale in its final days on a weekday, the way god intended. The show is in four venues spread out over a fairly wide area. I followed my friend's advice and went through the main venue first, at the Yokohama Museum of Art, and then I took the free shuttle bus to the NYK Waterfront Warehouse. Then I walked to Sakuragicho Station, which is not the fastest way to get back to Tokyo, but it is the best way to get a slice of delicious apple pie.

I guess a lot of the art I didn't 'get.' Like, the audio guide said that this piece below "looks like a wall covered in pure gold, but it's actually 60,000 individual thumbtacks." As if therein lies the amazement. But it looked like a lot of thumbtacks to me. I mean, it looks neat. The foreground is, I believe, 28,000,000 Fake Diamonds and One Real Diamond, which is intriguing and fun to look at. The museum guard leaned over the pile to straighten the Do Not Touch sign or to shoo some wayward gems back into place and her pen fell into the pile. I wondered how much of a breach that was. It's her job to keep people from chucking stuff into the art and there she goes dropping her pen in.

28000000 fake diamonds... and no people

I liked a few pieces. Damien Hirst's stained glass windows made of butterfly wings were gorgeous and, up close, macabre. Far and away the most amazing thing there for me was Christian Marclay's 24-hour-long film The Clock. Here's 00:04 - 00:07. (For best results, watch it at that time.) I went back a second time on a weekend to see it and it was still worth seeing another thirty minutes of it, even after waiting 20 minutes in line to get in. (Seriously. Don't go places on the weekend.)
The show is only on through November 6. If you won't make it, Tokyo Art Beat has a great photo report of many of the highlights. MTokyoblog has a nice overview of the Triennale and great pictures of the critters outside the museum.

Adventures in Japanese cough medicine

Tablets, capsules or powders. Cough syrup doesn't seem to exist.

It's my fault I was playing trial and error all through a nasty and persistent case of acute bronchitis. I went to the doctor as soon as my temperature hit 104. After a glance down my throat and a second of listening to my breathing, he said, "If it's the flu, you'll have to stay home. Otherwise, you can take medicine and go to work tomorrow." He ruled out the flu by sticking a cotton swab so far up my nose it hit my brain. The nurse came to where I was slouching in the waiting room and said, "You're negative for flu. You can go downstairs and get your medicine and pay."
"If it's not the flu, what is it?" I croaked.
"It's not the flu. You can go downstairs and get your medicine."
"I have a temperature of 104 and you can hear how this cough sounds. I'd like to know more than 'not the flu' if possible," I said Americanly.
"You want to talk to the doctor again? Fine." She was annoyed.
I waited another hazy block of time in the theater-row seating of the waiting room til the doctor called me back in.
"It's not the flu," he said.
"I'm sorry to bother you again," I said Japanesely, "But my family seems to get pneumonia rather easily and I've never had a cough and fever like this before. I just wanted to ask what you think I might have."
"It's bronchitis," he said. "I'm prescribing a fever reducer, cough suppressant and antibiotics."
I blame the fever. And past experience of leaving the doctor with a bag full of medicine that didn't help much and cost a fortune. I panicked: I had drawers full of Advil, Tylenol and Nyquil at home. I told him I had stuff I knew worked, so I'd just take the antibiotics, please. He shrugged and unticked the boxes and said take care.
I'd always considered Nyquil the nuclear option in cold fighting. That night, I took a full dose (half usually knocks me out cold) - and woke up coughing every 45 minutes. The next night I took the full dose and then, a mere few hours later, took another full dose, afraid it would put me into a cold-med coma. It didn't, unfortunately.
The next day I shuffled to the nearest pharmacy and asked for their strongest cough medicine. The pharmacist grabbed a box of Nobikku powder and said it was the best. It tasted like burnt cinnamon and left me coughing all night.
I went to a different pharmacy the next day and again asked for their strongest stuff. They'd never heard of Nobikku, but gave me the capsules in the gold box above, Nuspol. It had the same ingredients in slightly higher amounts. (One key ingredient in all of them is Noscapine, also known, awesomely, as Narcotine. A mild hallucinogen.) I went on it full time, and made sure to stay away from heavy machinery and social media.
When I ran out, I hit a third pharmacy where they'd never heard of either of the other two medicines. Even though they aren't branded with the pharmacies' names, the drugs seem to be proprietary to each place. This third guy brought out a pile of boxes and finally recommended Cool One, apologizing that it was tablets instead of capsules. Down the hatch four at a time.
I wish I had a more helpful report, but ultimately, whatever and however much I took, I ended up waking up constantly. I coughed so hard one night that I injured a rib or two, adding a stabbing pain to every cough from then on.
I also went through a whole bottle of honey and a pile of lemons.
The take-home lesson here is this: at least try the prescription medicine. 
Better yet, don't get bronchitis.

Meiji Jingu Doll Appreciation Festival

Meiji Jingu Doll Appreciation Festival, a set on Flickr.

In Japan, a person's doll is thought to be animated with a spirit, so when it's time to get rid of the dolls, you can't just throw them in the trash. You take them to the shrine on Doll Appreciation Day to be blessed or exorcised. A donation of 3000 yen or more is required. Judging by the people we watched handing over department store bags full of dolls and stuffed animals, it seems like this amount might cover as many as you like. A guide who was walking around with an info sheet in four languages said that they expected about 40,000 dolls to have been brought in on the one day. Even if a few people squeezed in an attic-ful of dolls in one go, that's a lot of money for the shrine.
They were separated by type to some extent: a row of tall southern belles with cartoon eyes here, some kewpie dolls there, an assembly of seated porcelain emperor and empress dolls spread out at the front. The variety was astonishing. There was a patch of Winnie the Poos (including one huge fellow with stuffing puffing out of where his right arm had been) from different eras clustered like a multi-year class reunion. There were traditional wooden kokeshi and the square Ainu figures that resemble totem poles. A few brand new Pokemon, as bright yellow as the day they were won (surely) in a street fair or amusement park. One or two old toddler-sized hard plastic dolls with eyes that slide open when they sit up, like we used to have in our own attic. In fact, I felt like I recognized at least a dozen as dolls that I'd had or seen growing up.
At four pm, a priest in white robes and tall black lacquered clogs sanctified the dolls by waving a bundle of young bamboo branches over them. Immediately, a team of older people with participant armbands began unpacking shopping bags and cardboard boxes to take them away. I asked the guide where they would be burned. "Someplace else," she said, and closed the conversation.
There were two dolls so caked in dirt that I couldn't help wondering if they'd drowned in the tsunami. I went back to take a picture of them and noticed they were gone before the collection started.