Do not drink, part 3

Pity singer Namie Amuro. When I got to Japan in 1997, she was a teenager and trapped in a shotgun wedding with her producer. Now she's can-size and trapped in vending machines and in an ad campaign touting Coke Zero as a health drink. Here are the (warning: J-pop noisy) commercials. "Really wild, healthy for your body" is the voiceover.

Exceptions

This is who can ride in the rush hour ladies-only train cars.

Hey, cherry tree! Over here! Smile!

Kourakuen is a beautiful walled garden in the middle of Tokyo. We happened to be nearby and went in as it was opening at 9 am on Saturday, and I would not recommend going a minute later. We followed a cluster of older people towing cameras and clambering at the gate to get in. (It's 300 yen, 150 for these keen seniors.) A dozen of them bum rushed a weeping cherry tree, practically elbowing each other for the best shot. Of a tree. It is unlikely that anyone got a picture that didn't have three other photographers in it.

The garden is lovely and seems to go on and on, with steep winding steps, a plum orchard, stone ruins, and even a small rice field. A note at the front says the garden was built in the 1600s (with help from a Chinese "refugee scholar") and is now only a quarter of its original size. A wooden map shows it in its contemporary setting and it seems like the rest of the garden was probably where the Tokyo Dome and Spa LaQua are now. Office buildings, the dome, and LaQua's Thunder Dolphin roller coaster poke up above the trees. Although we could hear traffic and kids shouting during a baseball game, it's easy to imagine the garden itself much unchanged for the last four hundred years.

Except for the photographers. If it seemed amusingly over-photographed at 9 am, by 11 it was most uncharmingly like downtown rush hour and I would not be surprised if a grandmother or a peace-sign posing tourist was bumped right off a narrow walkway into one of the the murky, koi-infested ponds.

I think this would be a wonderful place to go throughout the year and see how it changes with Japan's four seasons.* Everyone should visit. Just not all at once, okay?


*I have been told many times that Japan has four seasons, often in the way that you might expect to be told that Japan has x-ray vision or some other enviable, unattainable super power. I am sure that most Japanese people realize that other countries also enjoy the blessing of having four seasons. But a few do not, and will eye you, when you claim that you do, first with suspicion and then with pity.
Koishikawa Kourakuen is near at least three stations: lots of lines including the Oedo at Kourakuen, and the JR Chuo at Suidobashi and Iidabashi. The nearest Iidabashi entrance has a facade that sort of looks like a huge impressionist metal locust diving into the ground. Sort of. It might look like something else entirely to you.

When you look at the map, can't you imagine the garden filling in all the space within 434?

Won't somebody think of the pandas?

Were the bonsai kittens not enough? Now it's the Nama-cha Panda in a plastic bottle. Won't someone stop them before all that is cute and furry is squished into clear containers?



Photo by Chris Matchett.
Video from my jittery cellphone shooting a video loop playing on a subway platform newspaper kiosk.

Rockness Burger

There is a guy at Freshness Burger who has neck tattoos and ear rivets. He blasts punk while he opens the shop in the morning. I am guessing this is his handiwork.

I was told there would be video games

The three-day weekend ended with a rainy girls' day out in Yokohama for some culture. Noisy, strobe-lit culture at the Red Brick Warehouse. We went to see a dance performance by Hiroaki Umeda. In large part because the promotional photo for it looked like Tron:












Neat, right? It turns out that's another piece. What we saw was also cool. It looked like this:











Still neat. Another reason I went was because it was called "Haptic," which is a word I learned when I was home in December. (It came up in conversation in the context of the way technology reacts to touch - specifically, the way a touch-screen phone gives a little bzzt to let you know it knows you touched it.)

I think the program said this piece was about light as an actual thing that touches your eye. I don't know if it's really "about" anything, though. I don't know much about dance or how it's talked about. The music was minimalist and industrial and he moved like a hummingbird robot. It felt like the music responded to his movements instead of the other way around. Maybe that's where haptic comes in?



He'll be in New York in May at the Japan Society. Go if you are around. And not epileptic.

If you like your gum threatening

The copy says "Don't stand behind my back!"

This gum is famous for having caffeine in it. It's sold as an "eye opener." I don't know if the amount of caffeine is noticeable, but it is so minty it could make your eyes water.

Even tough guys keep it neat. Like most little pots of gum, it comes with a pack of little post-its to wrap your chewed up gum in. They're small and sturdy and I often keep them in my purse to use as ... well, as little post-its. Flags for magazine pages or books. There's another little hack for you.

Yep. It's loud.

This construction site near the north end of Tokyo Station has two live meters showing how loud the work there is (top) and how much the ground is vibrating (bottom). It also has a bowing LED construction worker. The crawl warns that vehicles go in and out of the site.

Survival phrases part 1

豆腐の角に頭をぶつけて死ね

To-fu no ka-do ni a-ta-ma o bu-tsu-ke-te shi-ne.

Bang your head on a block of tofu and die.

I'll take cross-cultural celebrations for 1000

Irish setters, Irish wolfhounds, Irish dancers, Irish beer, people who like the band U2, a guy named Rajiv asking Kyoko to marry him, and a whole lot of Irish bars.

Alex, Who had floats in Sunday's oddly subdued Omotesando St. Patrick's Day parade?

It's so hard to say goodbye

This is the problem with Japanese. You can memorize the two alphabets and 2,000 characters just as well as you can memorize anything. Pronunciation and grammar are simpler than any romance language. And people know right away that you aren’t a native speaker and often adjust to your level. Like the nice older couple from Shikoku we met while we were swiveling in the tall orange Jacobsen chairs at the National Art Center.

They sat down nearby and started chatting with us. Just the usual. Where you from, why do you speak Japanese, how long have you been here? They turned back to their own conversation. They got up a few minutes later and bowed, and I bobbed my head and muttered.

This was the very day I was celebrating my good score on the Japanese language proficiency test. I had been deemed proficient, and by a hearty margin. Jim threw me a curveball. “How do you say ‘goodbye’ again?”

Hmm. Goodbye. Goodbye. That should be an easy one. He saw I was thinking way too hard and looked, understandably, like I was holding out on him. Why couldn’t I just answer, for Pete’s sake? “What did you just say to those people when they left? I just want to know the word for ‘goodbye.’”

The fact is, I wasn’t sure. Since they were strangers and much older, “ja, mata,” or “ja ne” seemed way too informal. Ditto an elongated “bye bye,” used a lot by younger people. If I had been the one walking away, “shitsureishimasu” or “shitsureishimashita” would have felt right, but seemed a little off since they were the ones leaving. The well-known “sayonara” seems to have the sense of wrapping things up, and we hadn’t talked enough to have anything to wrap up.

I admitted that I had actually not been sure what the right way to say it had been, and I’d punted with “domo,” an all-purpose term that can stand in for “nice to see you,” “thank you,” “welcome,” or “very much.” And, I hope, “goodbye.”

Don’t even think about asking me how to say “you.”

Is it possible to have a passing grade revoked?

A few chairs never ruined a bar

An elegant French tapas standing bar called Q opened near our place. They have all you can drink wine, six varieties, for 1800 yen. (The absence of chairs might limit the damage you could do to this deal.) We stuck to green tea plum wine mixed with soda water.
From outside, the black lacquer, stainless steel and artful indirect lighting threaten smooth jazz, but, as at the smoky Chinese place downstairs, the music is pure 80s.

There was a platter of thick pieces of peppered bacon out on the bar, and I shushed someone in our party who joked that it was "service" - free. Then the friendly Okinawan bar tender came over later and, in one of the more unexpected questions I've gotten in a while, asked, "Do you like bacon?" I'd forgotten about the tray. "It's free. All you can eat. Help yourself, it's over there."

Nice! But I can't see what harm a few chairs would to. There would be nothing to stop you if you wanted to stand, right?

This Q is the third branch in Tokyo - they are also in Ebisu and Nishi Azabu.

Slogan of the week goes to Japan Rail

Making yesterday's awesome tomorrow's usual.

Udderly ridiculous

Did you look at the Kochakaden tea website? You didn't? That's okay. But do it now. Here. That's a link right to the cow milking game. There are explanation screens. I skipped them, and you should, too. Just click the big button at the bottom of the field of cows and soon you will be squeezing udders into a pail.

(Keep the volume low. The cows are a little testy.)

Do not drink, part 2

Cherry blossom season means everything gets a pink makeover come late February/early March.

The "fragrant cherry blossom" flavored Kochakaden ("black tea; expression with flowers?"*) is a limited edition Coca-Cola product that looks pretty and says it has the "delicate scent of brilliant cherry blossoms."

I think it has the "chemical odor of artificial peach esters and a ton of sugar."

Ben liked it. Maybe you would, too. (To be clear, I wasn't so crazy about it, myself. I do love their Double Strength Afternoon Tea even though it makes my hands shake.)


*I can't find this in a dictionary. Chinese idiom?

Take good care of this piece of paper FAIL

One of these official documents is brand new and is meant to protect my life and limb for the next year. One is expired and worthless. Go on and take a stab at which is which.

Yeah.

While I find this sort of hilarious, in an awful way, the person who issued it will not. I can't even imagine explaining that, in a fit of efficiency, I tore up the new paper moments after she handed it to me. Taping it up probably wouldn't fly in any developed country, but all the less so here where a slip of the pen means redoing any kind of paperwork.

A friend said I should just come clean right away and explain what happened. I said I was leaning toward waiting a week and saying it was lost.

"No, you don't want her to think you're the kind of person who would lose something important like that."

Better to be the kind of person who takes something important and rips it into quarters?

UPDATE:

I am happy to say that I was totally wrong about the person in question. She cracked a (small) smile and said to just tape it up.

Leprechauns sell

Gaba's ads for one-on-one English classes are not getting any less strange. This little guy is Mr. Listen-to-your-concerns.

In praise of the clear umbrella

Fire walking with me

An explanation about what the Takao fire walking festival was like can only sound like a rattled out dream - there were all these people in white chanting, and a big pile of pine branches, and then a priest waved an axe and a sword at the pile and then another priest - oh, and they all had wireless mics - another priest circled the pile and shot arrows into it. One spread clear liquid from a wooden bucket onto the pile with a golden ladle, either water or kerosene. They kept chanting and praying and shaking rattly bells and blowing conch shells - yeah, it was in the middle of the mountains but they all had giant conch shells in net coverings - and then one lit a torch from an altar and lit the whole pile on fire.

As the pile burned down, it was reverse engineered to a blackened scaffold and kindling that had been under the fresh green, sending out a dry campfire smell with the damp pine. Luckily (for me) the thick smoke was blowing out over another side of the pen, although fine ash drifted down over everyone. They used long rakes to mash it down into coals, then dumped four sacks of salt to make two entrances and exits. The Japanese people nearby seemed to have as little clue as I did as to what was going on and what it all meant. A kid kept looking up from his video game to quiz his parents and they kept shrugging and guessing. "I think it's rice, an offering. No, it's salt. It's to sprinkle on the fire. No, it's to stand on. I don't know. My feet are cold. Yeah, I think they should hurry up and start with the fire walking already, too."




After an hour and a half of chanting and burning, the firewalking started.


After all the officials had gone through, they opened it up to everyone. I walked up the hillside to the end of the line that was so far away that the drum sounded quieter. After waiting almost another hour, I would have happily put my icy feet in a roaring fire. As it was, either the walk was too quick, the coals had been trampled by too many people already, or I have discovered a new superhuman power, and I am disappointed to report that walking across the bed of coals did not feel hot at all. The cold, stony mud on the other side was painful and unpleasant, but not at all the way I'd been braced for.




Mt. Takao is also a great place to hike, with nice views of Mt. Fuji. You can skip the hike and take a cable car or chair lift to historic Yakuoin temple at the top.
Here's a timetable for getting to Takao from Shinjuku. The special morning hiker trains get you there super fast. The orange ones with "" above them take about 45 minutes, with one easy transfer right across the platform.

How is the UN Security Council like a small mall in Tokyo?

This makes me wonder what other public places have Guernica on display. One is the city of Guernica. I used to walk past the tapestry version at the United Nations every day. And this is in Oazo shopping mall near Tokyo Station and the Otemachi Chiyoda station.
It's painted on ceramic tiles. There's a typo on the sign next to it: the Japanese version says the original was painted in 1937 and the English puts it in 1973. I'd love to know why this was chosen for a lounge that has flowers and dragonflies embossed on the manhole covers.

Not at my home, though, please

Please take your trash with you.

Notice that this does not say Please use a trash can. There are few anywhere and none on platforms since the sarin attack.
This is, of course, no excuse to blow your nose and then try to hide the tissue like this guy, doo-doo-doo, which actually I find very difficult to imagine anyone trying to get away with.

Mmm, recession cake

Today an intrepid reporter took to the streets to ask trendy "Shibuya girls" aged 18-24 where they were cutting back to save money. The number one response was on food. A few were carrying 500-ml bottled waters and said they had refilled them at home from 1.5-l bottles (illustrated with a helpful bottle-refilling studio reenactment). The woman at right carries her own "my cup."
Quite a few said they are cooking at home now.
What made the reporter's eyes pop out of his head was the number of young women eating udon at a cheap noodle chain called Hanamaru where a small bowl of plain noodles with all the free fried crunchy bits and sesame seeds you can heap on is just 105 yen. Add a semi-raw egg and some scallions for just under 300. I think places like that have always been considered slurp-and-go bastions of salary men. The reporter did a quick census with two of those clicky people counter gadgets and found 20 out of 34 total customers were young women.
They also reported that there has been a jump in sales of pancake mix in the last year. The go is to dump it into the rice maker for a thick, spongy cake.

Subway shooting

First-person shooter game on a regular cell phone. Do we have that?