The wrong flowers

I bought the wrong flowers. It's not the first time, so I should have recognized the look of concern, the whispered consultation between staff behind the register. "These aren't... a present?"
"Nope, just for me," I said. No fancy ribbons necessary.
"Well... you know that these are something-something flowers..."
"Sorry, they're what-flowers?" They had no roots, which I know are a big no-no for taking to sick people, so that wasn't the problem.
"For an altar. Or a grave. They have a chrysanthemum. Are you planning to use these for an altar or a grave?"
Oh. This.
"Uh, no. But it's okay." Is it okay? I'm in a hurry. It's rush hour and the florist is wedged in a corner of a train station that's under construction. Exposed beams, steel floor plates and taped-up wall coverings make it feel extra claustrophobic and clangy. I just want to take my ¥500-bouquet and get out of there.
"They are meant for an altar or a grave. I wonder if that's okay with you?" she asked again. I can't read the tone, the degree of concern. Was she worried that I didn't understand or offended that I understood and was going to do something heathen with them anyway?
"I understand, and it's okay," I said. I paid and left.
But I wondered if it was okay. Was this a ha-ha, toilet-slippers-in-the-living-room faux pas or a shoes-in-the-house felony? After all this time, there's still plenty I just don't really know.

Disastrous?

Cherry blossom sneak attack

Asymmetrical sakura warfare at Aoyama Cemetery

The steady march of the sakura front this year was more of an overnight ambush. A few warm days brought the blossoms out a week and a half earlier than predicted. There's usually a lot of close watching of the buds, but this year it seems like they exploded all at once on Spring Equinox Day. Hanami parties that have been long scheduled for the second week of April now are more likely to take place on a carpet of mashed up flowers and under leaf buds. This weekend is the perfect hanami weather: it looks warm enough to enjoy some drinks and snacks in the park, but it's probably actually kind of freezing once you're sitting on a plastic sheet on the ground. Just the way people seem to like it. One of my favorite hanami parties was the one that ended up with 20 people relocated to our living room when it started raining. If you insist on mi-ing the hana outside with the crowds, though, this free iSakura app I wrote about three years ago* is still pretty cool for finding a good spot. Just watch your shoes. At the end of one long hanami party, mine were gone.

*I'm rereading that last paragraph, and I have no idea why we shoehorned in those unrelated apps. What was that about?!

Akihabara scavenger hunt

When friends come to visit and want to go Akihabara, I give them a map and send them on their way. Maid cafes, anime, video games, computer parts — none of it speaks to me. So I was surprised to find myself navigating by the glow of a big electronics store and a bank of gashapon capsules to find a shop the other day. My visiting friend hadn't had time to make it to this one store, and had become enamored with some manga-inspired clothes there that he saw online after going back to New York. There's no place else in the world to get this stuff! Part of the reason he hadn't been able to go is that their business hours are between 6 p.m. and midnight, Fridays and Saturdays only. Or so the internet said. Last Saturday night, I found the building and started up the steep stairs. There were signs for the figurine store on the third floor, but nothing beyond that. Just narrow stucco walls and a metal lip, just loose enough to bite, on each step. Wouldn't there be a sign if there were really a famous shop up here? The fourth floor, a non-descript, locked door. One more twist, and there was... something. It seemed we had stumbled onto a storage pile. Except it wasn't a pile. The giant shoes and bike tubing and the plastic alligator were arranged to leave just enough room for a foot on each step leading straight up to the door. It looked like everything might be covered in a heavy layer of dust, but it was all clean. There were postcards freshly taped to the door. (One was an ad for the shop on the first floor. Which seemed backward.) The metal doorknob turned, but the door was bolted. I knocked. Looked around at the junk again to see if there was anything that said this was the right place. A corkboard propped up at waist-height and half-draped in burlap had more postcards for C-list idol shenanigans in the area. 5okai is a bleeding-edge fashion shop whose designers take inspiration from Akihabara street culture. It had to be the place. But there was no sign, no hours, no phone number. There was nothing more we could do but knock again, shrug, and take a few pictures. We climbed back down to street level, the mission a complete failure.

Except that if felt like a complete success. After five years in Tokyo, we go more to places we've been before than places we haven't. Having a reason to see someplace I would never go on my own was great. I'm about to leave one of my jobs. Maybe I should start a Tokyo scavenger service, and I could always have reasons to go to places I don't have any reason to go.

White Day Day

Put a marshmallow on it

Mini Plaza, where they'd had the awesome but underappreciated Zoology Chocolates at Valentine's Day, had a White Day sign in the window, but no designated goods inside. At Andersen Bakery, it was just regular pastry and bread. Around the corner, bingo! A line had formed in front of a cake shop, all men. There were big White Day signs hanging over the counter, and the shop was doing a brisk business in baumkuchen and Tokyo Bananas. It was around 8:30 pm, so it's not unlikely the guys had forgotten and realized they had to come up with something at the last minute. (Hey, no judgement — I grabbed the Valentine's monkey on the way home, too.) Can't help but wonder if the coffee stand next door was similarly caught off guard, with their White Day treat: berry muffins with two plain marshmallows squashed on top. There was no line.

BONUS: What the heck is White Day? And best White Day sign ever, bar none. Maybe best sign ever.

Quake books

I've learned from other anniversaries that there's an uneasiness your body carries in a separate place from actual memories. It looks outside for things to blame for the feeling, things that are similar enough to that time to account for the feeling - remember the strange, flat cloud that hovered like a long runway over Mount Fuji for a few days before the quake? And there was that crazy dust storm yesterday, and that flash of light in the sky last night? And knowing that none of these things are connected in any way to each other or to earthquakes doesn't stop them from getting tangled up in a general feeling of foreboding. And calamities swirl together only long enough to light up illogical warning circuits in the brain - what if they're planning another attack today in celebration - no, that's the wrong kind of disaster. There is no "they" this time. No day is any more (or less) likely than any other for shaking and drowning, strange clouds or no. But some days do bring the memories closer to the surface, both in that murky, headachey way that is the body trying to process 20,000 dead and multiples of that grieving, and in the logical way that craves narrative and logic, story and analysis. For the first we have art and candlelight vigils and trains stopping in remembrance at 2:46. For the second we have reading and writing.

Reconstructing 3/11 was done not to raise money but to do some journalistic exploration of the aftermath of the disasters and the outlook for recovery. I was one of a handful of people who helped Our Man in Abiko edit the contributions. To get the book into more people's hands, it is available as a free download from Amazon until March 14th. A print version is also available. Nathalie-Kyoko Stuckey and Jake Adelstein's chapters are free online now.

Quakebook (2:46 Aftershocks) will become more interesting with time. It was an attempt to capture people's immediate responses and to generate money for charity. It exists in quite a few different versions, English and Japanese, print and digital.
March Was Made of Yarn is a collection of fiction inspired by 3/11. I got a chance to talk to editors David Karashima and Elmer Luke recently. In process and outcome, it seems like a thoughtful companion to the eyewitness rush of Quakebook. I had somehow missed it when it came out last year, I suppose maybe because I was busy helping with Reconstructing 3/11? I'm looking forward to reading it now.

Please feel free to leave links to other good reads in the comments.

Apocalyptic dust cloud over Tokyo

13:47, from Sendagaya looking toward Shinjuku

17:02, same view

I was just about to go out for a walk on the most beautiful afternoon of the year so far when I looked out the window. Yikes! The Shinjuku skyline was all but obliterated by this yellowish, greenish, fast-moving haze. I've never seen anything like it. Miyazaki, where I used to live in Kyushu, gets an annual blast of yellow sand from China, but it never looked like this. Everyone assumed at first this was a sudden storm of the kousa mixed with a little PM2.5 smog-wave from China stirred up with a hearty dash of cedar pollen, but the Japanese news said it wasn't. It said, rather, that it was dusty haze. Or hazy dust. 煙霧。(The dictionary defines enmu as "haze; mist; fog; smog.") The initial reported statement from the weather bureau was simply that it would dissipate soon. The closest I could make out to an answer was "chiri nado," or an anemic "dust etc." I don't think I'm the only person unsatisfied with the information available so far. Pay no attention to the apocalyptic cloud! It may be a long night of fury and joy for the conspiracy-minded.

 
My Twitter pal @BurritoJustice animated these Tokyo smog-dust-haze storm pictures on his Tumblr.

The silent scream of the yomogi daifuku

Don't eat me!

It's easy to pretend daifuku are sort of healthy. They're basically beans wrapped in rice. Except that ingredients three through five are different types of sugar, and then, at least in ones like this guy that come from the convenience store, there are another half dozen ingredients that we probably don't even want to know about: preservatives, stabilizers and who knows what. Still, they've got that same "traditional Japanese" halo effect that makes chicken karaage seem healthier than Kentucky fried and a giant, fluorescent kakigori more calorie-neutral than a Slurpee. I wonder if anyone from Japan ever feels that way about, say, a snickers bar. Nah.

Why are you coughing all over the place!?

No, seriously, why!?

Oh man is this one timely. Pollen levels are high and colds are still going around and people are sneezing and coughing and spluttering all over the place. The woman next to me on the train tonight coughed right on my hand (I was holding my phone at face level) just as I was getting out. She'd been coughing discreetly along the way, but this time I felt the full blast on my skin. I turned and gave her a germy look. Then I immediately felt bad about it. Then I remembered that she had just coughed on me. No mercy! If Wronged Bear isn't putting up with it, neither am I. (Hm, am I learning the right lesson from these posters?)