Where to find eggnog in Tokyo

The best thing about making eggnog for 50 people is when the checkout ladies at the grocery store try to guess what you might be doing with all those eggs and all that cream. "Are you making some... cake?" Once I explain what eggnog is, they want all the details. Is it served warm or cold? In a mug, juice glass, wine glass? They ask a million questions, repeat all the ingredients like they're going to be tested on it later, and then one goes in the back and brings out a half dozen new containers of cream, saying they're fresher than what's on the shelf and will be more delicious.
It's the first time they've ever said a word to me beyond "Do you have your point card?" and "Here is your change." They wave as I leave, still chatting and laughing to each other.

I use this easy eggnog recipe with great results every time. It tastes good after sitting overnight, and the second (and third) batch whipped up in the middle of the party is great right away, too. Cheers!

Ho Ho Home invasion Santa

Japan doesn't really have chimneys, because Japan doesn't really have central heating. That has some nice results, like cozy evenings cuddled up with the electric carpet or under the kotatsu, and some unpleasant results, like GAH it's freezing in here! But the most important unexpected consequence is that Santa has nothing to slide down. And so he climbs up. Santa-on-a-ladder is something of a decorating theme around here. Here are a few I've seen around the neighborhood. Send your pics along if you'd like to add or link them!

Stumbling unawares toward an oncoming train

Now this is what December posters are meant to be about. Tokyo Metro warns that some 60 percent of platform injuries involve alcohol. (Is that all?)
Someone on Twitter (I'm sorry, please tell me if you remember who it was) points out that he's so drunk he's about to get himself accidentally killed, but not so drunk that he'd forget to bring a little gift.

Cellphones!? Where are the drunks!?

"Do you have to use your mobile phone here?"

I could have sworn the last four Decembers were mannerized with posters about drinking and/or being drunk on the train. It's no coincidence. In December, everyone is drinking and/or drunk on the train. It's a thing. So what's with the ever-green cell-phone scolding!?

What's with the trash!?

"Why is there trash here? The train is not a garbage can."

I was out of the country at the beginning of the month when the posters changed. (I'm squeaking it in here under the wire for the Tokyo Metro manners posters completists out there!) You do see the occasional bottle or wrapper on the trains in Tokyo. On the whole, though, Japanese public spaces have a few orders of magnitude less litter and grime than comparable public spaces in US cities. It's weird, getting back to the states; until your eyes adjust, you see little problems everywhere that seem easily fixed. "Why don't they repave those dangerous potholes!?" you think. "Why hasn't this paint been touched up in the last 20 years!? Who let the shelves at the grocery store get so untidy!?" And, "Oh my god you have got to be kidding me, why is the cashier waving around the wine chiller she's ringing up for me and shouting at the woman at the next register that she would like one of these for her birthday which is in three weeks and none of y'all better forget!?"
After a few days, though, questions like "Why is there trash here!?" start to seem pointless, and you stop noticing the blemishes. Until, that is, you get back to Tokyo and a piece of garbage out of place seems noteworthy again.
If history is any guide, December's poster will be about public drunkenness. Check back soon!

Wonderful Life with the Elements

What we really want to know about an element - how do I say it in Japanese, and will it make my voice sound funny?

I was excited when No Starch press offered to send a copy of Bunpei Yorifuji's Wonderful Life with the Elements to check out. The book is a delight! Am I supposed to be objective? I don't know, I've never done a book review before. My sense is that I'm supposed to say if I liked it or not, and I did. The drawings are charming (I wonder how many Bunpei character tattoos there are out there?) and the information in it is deceptively rich. I can imagine this book could capture the imagination of a kid at just the right moment, when they're deciding whether to stick with chemistry or write it off as something they'll never really get.

My high school chemistry teacher used to warn everyone to keep both feet firmly planted inside the chemistry train and hold on tight, because "the chemistry train keeps chugging along, and once you fall off, it's real hard to get back on!" He'd check in with everyone from time to time, asking, "Okay? You still on board? How many atoms in a mole? Right! Don't fall off!" I pretty much stayed on, at least through the second semester of organic, in college. (Isn't that enough?) I was never particularly into Japan or Japanese stuff in high school or most of college. If I had been, though? I probably would have papered my dorm room with the pages of this book.

I wrote more about Elements on Japan Pulse, where I am now editing more than writing.

Kinmokusei 金木犀: this is what that smell is

Japan smells like perfume for a few weeks in the fall. The reason is the fragrant olive tree, or kinmokusei in Japanese. It has dark,　pointed oval leaves like a regular olive tree and clusters of little bright orange flowers. I don't remember ever smelling this at home. The sweet smell was so strong in my neighborhood in Miyazaki that it was almost nauseating on warm evenings. I wondered if it's ever actually used in perfume.
It turns out that it is used as a fragrance, but not very often. And this is not without reason—from the 70's to the mid-90's, kinmokusei was the only game in town when it came to toilet deodorizers. For the majority of Japanese people old enough to remember, the smell is too closely associated with bathrooms to be repurposed. Way to ruin nature!
It seems like this may be changing, though, as other scents like lavender and soap take over bathroom duty. I bought some hand cream the other day, a fall-only limited fragrance called Osmanthus. It smelled nice, but not familiar. I gave some to a coworker to try, and she looked up the name and said "Ohhhh, of course! Kinmokusei! You know that tree, right? Everyone knows that tree!"

Mister Softee is parked in Tokyo

Chocolate banana, off the secret menu

Mister Softee has joined Auntie Anne's, Ben &Jerry's, and Bubby's in conspiring to keep me well (poorly) fed in Tokyo. (Yes, there's a new-ish Wendy's, but I don't really care about it and its foie gras stuntburgers. Which, incidentally, may not be doing so well, as they had people standing on the street handing out coupons this weekend. You heard it here first!) I helped our writer put a little story about it on Japan Pulse, and then I headed over to see the place for myself over the weekend. I expected a certain dissonance in seeing that classic logo nestled among expensive Italian chocolate-covered figs, but it worked. The woman who runs it, Andrea Fisher, was very friendly and totally impressive. There's a long version of her story, but the short version is that she loves ice cream and brought Mister Softee here by sheer determination. She's also a Julliard-trained flautist and runs her own bag company and didn't stop driving her ice cream truck around Brooklyn even when an angry Armenian slashed her tires. (Alex and I left feeling excited by the reminder that there are people out there getting stuff done in a big way and more guilty than ever about our own little unfocused projects.) She's coming up with new flavors to make in their fancy mix-in machine every day. She told us a few of the ones she's working on to add to the lineup of berry, cactus and apple pie. There's one in particular in the works that I don't think I'm supposed to reveal. But I have a feeling that once she starts selling it, you'll hear about it.

Hanging with Ernesto Neto in Tokyo

This is not Ernesto Neto.

We found some very cool art to climb around in. It's a huge installation by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto hanging above, of all places, the Louis Vuitton store in Omotesando. Not exactly a place that conjures images of taking your shoes off and giggling in mid-air. You feel like you've stumbled into the lair of a space spider.
It's open til the beginning of January. And it's free! Gorgeous sunset view.
Pop into the the Louis Vuitton shop and hang a very, very quick right to get to the elevator that goes right to the Espace Louis Vuitton gallery.
Thanks to Jason Jenkins for the tip!

Death (flowers) in the cemetery

How appropriate.

I walk through Aoyama Cemetery one or two mornings a week, sometimes three. I love it. There's no place where I more consistently feel gratitude for my life here. Starting simply with being on the right side of the marble slabs. And from there to everything else: that my legs and feet and knees are cool with walking a few kilometers, that it's a pretty route, that I have a job to walk to, that it's work I enjoy that pays well, that my friendly co-worker keeps the office stocked with fresh boxes of cookies. And there's the cemetery itself. I like knowing I could take a slightly different path through it every day and not run out of variations for a long, long time. I love how it smells a little different each time I'm there, with something new always sprouting or withering. This week the hell flowers were in bloom. I'd forgotten about discovering the flowers of the dead for the first time last year until I stumbled over them near a few graves. They appear suddenly and die fast. 

Catching an unexpected glimpse of them is just one more thing to be happy about in the cemetery.

Why are you hogging the priority seats!?

Please offer the courtesy seat when someone needs it.

I dare say New Yorkers are better than Tokyoites at giving up their seats on subways. I have a few recently pregnant friends in NYC who might beg to differ. Overall, however, it seems to be more of a point of pride for people there to swap places with the injured, the elderly and the pregnant. Japan comes out ahead in adorable pole-swinging mystery critters, though, of course.

Tokyo Station projection mapping extravaganza

Tokyo Station was our first gateway into the city. We spilled off the Narita Express and into the rush-hour crowd with our bags and instructions to go out the Marunouchi Central exit. Sounded easy, but Tokyo Station was under such heavy renovation that the signs were a confusing taped-up patchwork of temporary rerouted arrows and the ground hobbled our suitcases with covered cables and uneven steel and rubber plates. That was 2008. The station has been under construction ever since. It's just about done now, though, scheduled for a grand re-opening on October 1.

They're celebrating with this big projection-mapping show. The opening and the part from about 7:15 are the best. Dinah Won't You Blow Your Horn goes on too long, and I don't quite get the magical nature and pan flutes bit. I guess they were never going to include the WWII air raid that damaged the building. Though that would have been interesting.

People who party in glass showrooms

I got invited to a party in my neighborhood for a company with a name that could as easily be a pharmaceutical maker as a defense contractor. I knew it wasn't either of these, but I couldn't remember what the industry was. The party was to launch a new product with a name that was equally opaque. The name was a combination of letters and numbers followed by a hyphen and then some syllables. I walked through the crowded rooms with a glass of wine in one hand and a paper plate of fancy cheese in the other. What was the T3-Whatsit, anyway? And where was it?

I looked in all the glass-walled showrooms for the new product the company was supposed to be showing off. Turns out they make glass walls.
— Sandra Barron (@sandrajapandra) September 13, 2012

Photo by TokyoDex

Why won't you let me out!?

I can't get off the train when others are standing in front of the door.

One of the things that makes visitors ooh and ah about how orderly Japan is is the train system. Rather, the way people use the train system. Japanese commuters form lines on the platform like iron shavings form lines over a magnetic grid. It is a tacit nod to the laws of physics, an acceptance that they cannot occupy the same space as the people who will inevitably spill out of the train when it stops. Unlike some (all) of the other cities we could name, the people waiting for trains in Tokyo keep clear a path for the people exiting the train. Once these same model citizens get on the train, though, they join the rest of the world in the belief that the inside of a train car is a magical space where the laws of physics are suspended. Once they are planted in front of the door, there they take root until they get out at their own stop. Sometimes they sway slightly out of the way like stalks of kelp; sometimes they stand firm. And it is a little enraging. Some of the kindest people I know admit to taking pleasure in elbowing their way through a stand of stubborn door blockers with sharp jabs. Imagine how much worse it would be if you were a weird little knee-high teddy bear.

Iodine gargle: do not use

Don't let the hippos fool you.

A Japanese saying reminds us that "good medicine is bitter." Bitter I could handle. "Fruity iodine," there are no words for how bad it tastes. The fruity part doesn't help at all. It's like spraying perfume over a chemical spill. If it weren't for the happily gargling hippos on every step of the instructions, I'd think I'd accidentally ingested something that was meant for cleaning metal or lubricating gears. Not to mention the second horror, when you spit it out in shock and the entire sink looks like a slasher film.  
After that one stomach-turning mouthful, I'm tossing the stuff. Having a sore throat is not that bad.
Why do we even have it? I'll tell you, even though it's embarrassing. I bought it instead of iodide tablets when the nuclear plants were looking wobbly. I knew that a bottle of iodine tincture wasn't even close. But it felt like taking a flimsy umbrella out on a day when a typhoon might hit. You know it's futile, the wrong approach altogether, but you'd feel remiss if you didn't at least try.
The pharmacist said, "It's not the same stuff, but in a pinch, it would be better than nothing to dilute and drink it. But normally, you know,  you shouldn't." What an understatement. I'd have to seriously reconsider how important my thyroid was before I'd drink that.

Commuters, take your marks!

Asics ad-bombed the entire Yamanote train I rode home from work tonight in a pretty excellent way. Everyone took the transformation a little more in stride (ha!) than you might expect.
I always knew Tokyoites would take the gold in commuting.

Why you gotta talk so loud?!

You may be having fun, but please keep your voices down.

This one, I don't think it would go over quite so well in the New York subway. You can just bet that a bunch of feminists would be all like, Why'd you have to use women to illustrate people talking too much on the train?!
Because you know how women are. Noisy!
Really, though, the groups of people I've personally witnessed being noisy on the train are, in order, first, groups of Americans, especially beefy guys, but mixed-sex clusters of skinny 20-somethings are super racket-prone, too, especially on an afternoon train toward, say, the beach; next, Japanese middle or high school kids in sports uniforms, maybe on a post-game high and usually with a pair of den-mother chaperones ignoring their rowdiness; next, groups of three or four swaying Japanese salarymen, collars open, redfaced and repetitive on the way home at night; and last, by a lot, pairs of young women who are all like, you know, and-then-he-was-like, and so on. 
So maybe they didn't choose the actual noisiest, but the least likely to complain about being portrayed as such. Maybe the first draft was a bunch of US military guys tossing gum wrappers and plastic bottles at each other across the aisle, and then someone thought better of it.

Meanwhile, in the pantry...

My balcony garden is doing terribly this year. Last year was okay, but I wanted it to be even better this time. So I started out with scrubbed planters and bags of fresh dirt and fertilizer. Miki said last year that the plants didn't have enough confidence to grow big when their planters weren't deep enough. I resolved to give all the plants enough space this year, especially these two gorgeous pepper plants I bought from a nice old lady. I got roomy new pots for them and added drainage pebbles at the bottom instead of just using shards of broken Ikea plates. One of the two plants is doing great — it even has a pepper that's starting to turn yellow, as promised on its tag. But the other got little red mites on it as soon as it was settled in. I picked them off one by one, but they came back right away, curling and stunting the leaves. The internet said to spray the plant with a mild dishsoap solution and wipe it down. But it seems I accidentally stumbled on the recipe for Agent Orange — in the morning, all but two leaves had fallen off. At the same time, even with lots of space and water and love, the basil is wilting and yellowish. (Basil! How is that possible?) The morning glories manage to put out beautiful blossoms in the morning, but the leaves are turning brown and the flowers wilt like damp laundry by the time I leave for work.

The sweet potato in the cupboard, however, is growing great. There's probably a lesson here somewhere, but I'm not sure I want to know what it is.