Eating lunch alone together

This is one of my favorite lunch places. I just realized I had no idea what it's called - I just think of it as "the place with the yellow flags out front near the office.*" And now that I look at the free point card I got there, it turns out to be one of those Japanese words that you still get wrong even when you (think you) can read it. The name is the characters for "small" and "town" -　小町 - and then cafeteria - 食堂. Aw, cute. Small town restaurant. Case closed, right? Nah. It seems "komachi" means "the town beauty" or "belle." Supposedly. So then why is the logo an old-school sushi chef giving a dead fish what for? Ah, anyway. None of this was the point.

The point is that I like this place because the owners are friendly and you can get whatever you like from the refrigerator case right inside the sliding front door. The kid next to me had fresh tuna and octopus sashimi with miso soup, and the guy across from me had three different deep fried mystery lumps doused in brown sauce with a pile of white rice. (I could have put a hand into the middle of each of their trays without straightening my elbows. I didn't, of course. But they are that close. Why are you looking at me like that?) I always grab a plate of fish marinated in miso and ginger and a veggie side or two, then go to the back counter to get some soup and a bowl of "health rice" with 10 types of grains and beans mixed in.

A kerchiefed motherly type whisks away whatever food you have that should be served warm and heats it up while you squeeze in at a communal table, either the long one in the middle or a four-seater next to the wall. She finds you and sets down your food and the bill while you grab chopsticks out of a box and hot tea and water from pitchers spaced along the table. There are small flat-screen TVs propped up on each side of the room tuned to some chatty afternoon variety show. I don't like TVs in bars or restaurants usually, but here it lends a living-room sort of feel and makes all the elbow-to-elbow solo diners seem less solitary.

I've only been at lunch, but it's open year round, 24/7 .

Bonus: Something in the restaurant - the phone? a notification that people are waiting by the register? - plays a MIDI version of Pomp and Circumstance. It does. Why would I make that up?

*Note to the tall: my coworker calls it "the place with the tiny tables that are impossible to sit at."

Komachi shokudo 2-17-14 Shinkawa, Chuo-ku, Tokyo and 5 other Tokyo locations.

Dodge seaweed?

Not sure quite what the beach-appropriate behavior here is. Wearing crocs? Pushing ladies toward oncoming vehicles? Frowning disapprovingly at young people having fun? All of the above, perhaps?

Last August's "Do it at the beach sign" was also a little obscure.

Do not turn your back on the crows

Crows have been in the news lately. A Washington Post article about Tokyo vs. the crows has been syndicated all over the place. It seems to me the lede was buried in favor of some alliteration. That crows are eating trash - even "garbage in Ginza" - is less surprising and interesting than that they are, in the third paragraph, eating the infrastructure of the fastest internet in the world. And the actual infrastructure, too - they've caused blackouts and stopped a bullet train?! Why not have your cake and eat it too: "shutting down shinkansens" or "feeding on fiber optics?"

Then from NPR, we find out that crows are crafty - vengeful and vindictive (wow, that is easy to fall into). The 8-minute audio portion has a story about how good they are at telling people apart and at holding a grudge forever. There's a photo test to see how good you are at telling crows apart. Those look like normal American crows, though. Listening to the story while picturing Japan's jungle crows, with beaks the size of of hearty lobster claws, makes it all the more chilling. (The character for "jungle crow," 嘴太鴉, which I don't think is actually used much, means "thick beak crow.")

Predatory crows seem to be a problem at Tokyo University, too. These signs I snapped there warn that there have been "many recent occurrences" of them sneaking up from behind on hapless students.

Among the list of warnings: As much as possible, do not take your eye off the crows.

So, how do we show that the gum is cool and refreshing?

Ideas?

We could do the drag queens again. Like a recurring character thing.

Don't be thick. That was juicy. We want cool.

How about ice, water, something watery...

Yes, water is good. Go on.

Water gum. Water in gum. A waterfall. A man in a waterfall. A water...

That's it, a waterman!

Chew the gum and... turn into a waterman.

Now, remember, it's gonna say "jetsplash" on the bottom. A waterman alone does not say "jetsplash."

I see. Yeah. How about a regular man and a waterman, and they're... I don't know. They're doing something refreshing together. Jetsplash... they're jetskiing, they're waterskiing, they're water-wrestling?

That's it, waterfight! The regular man is just hanging out in his suit, and the waterman smacks the him across the face!

Now that is refreshing. We just have to make sure the waterman looks kind of evil, maybe more like a water demon.

Pool on the roof

So many rooftops, so few kiddie pools. Good job, neighbors!

Things were looking up.

Last week was a good one for staring up at the sky. Well, sort of. Technically, I think I heard somewhere once that you're not supposed to "stare" at an eclipse. Old wives' tale, right? Right?

To recap, last Saturday morning, we looked off the balcony and saw a white, shiny ball hovering quietly somewhere over Shibuya. It was probably a blimp, viewed head-on.

Sunday, killing time waiting for Terminator Salvation to start, an amazing pale half rainbow arched over Tokyo Tower and then brightened and then doubled. My rainbow picture was just from my cell phone - Jim happened to have his camera out to take this because the light was nice right before the rainbow came out.















And of course, on Wednesday, the longest total solar eclipse for another hundred years or so passed over Tokyo just before lunch. Most of the coverage griped about the lousy weather and heavy cloud cover. It was cloudy. But I didn't have much work to do and wandered over to the nearby Sumida River to check it out anyway. There was a whole lot of cloudy sky and nothing else for a while. The cover was so thick I couldn't even tell where in the sky the sun would be. And then, suddenly, almost straight over head behind a thin patch in the clouds, there it was - a little crescent moon. And then gone again. But then back! A woman with a yappy dog sat on a bench and took photos with a cell phone. I thought that was a dumb idea but tried it anyway and it came out better than you would think. An old man and I pointed at the sky grinned at each other. I hung out for a while, watching the eclipse flash in and out of the clouds, a little different each time. A bunch of office workers stood on a corner nearby and squealed. As I walked back to the office, there were still little clots of people scattered around. A woman watched me as I walked by, looking a little concerned. I asked, "You see it?" She looked relieved and said "Yeah!" I imagined she was afraid I didn't know there was an eclipse on. That's how I felt when I saw joggers going along the river without looking up at all.













I think this photo came out pretty well for a point and shoot with no tripod. Incidentally, something bad happened to my Ixy's display screen on the trip home - when I got off the airplane, a plastic hairclip in my bag was snapped in two and there was a pinkie-print size dead spot on the camera screen. It puts a grey glob with a corona around it on every image. Looking at the eclipse pictures on that screen, it looks like a partial eclipse next to a (dull) total eclipse.

Total eclipse of the sun

There. Now I'm blind. You're welcome.

Roppongi rainbow

Two-storey rose sculpture and double rainbow from Roppongi Hills at about 6:30 this evening.

I loved the crowd taking photos of the sky en masse, like a practice run for when the aliens come.

Happy Ocean Day

In honor of the Ocean Day three-day weekend and my own hankering for some salt water and sand, here is a Tokyo beach guide written by the ever-awesome Tokyo Mango in Metropolis. Shirahama in Shimoda is nice but too far for a day trip. I've been to Enoshima a few times to try surfing and my overall impression was of a black and white ink wash painting. (I imagine it would be less so had I not gone on cloudy days. The surf instructor pointed toward an electronic message board and said "Point the nose of the board toward the 'Strong warning: high wind' sign and paddle!" Unsettling.) But the sand is always blackish.

Ocean, sand, jellyfish, seagulls - a beach is a beach, right? Sort of. Even going to the beach in Japan is a little different from home. At Enoshima, Mt. Fuji pokes out of the clouds and looms over the sea. Trashcans are few and concrete pylons are plentiful. The Japanese-y-est beach experience I had was in Kyushu. A few drops of rain started to splatter on the sun hats and shades. A chime rang, and a calm voice alerted beach goers a few times that rain was beginning to fall. It felt like the Truman Show.

Bonus song! I don't imagine you'll like this old song, "Umi sono ai," about the ocean and manhood and loneliness and love. At all. But I dare you not to feel a tiny bit moved when he hits the chorus at 1:01.



Uh, no? Just me? It was used in a pachinko commercial earlier this year. It featured a fat, blond Japanese man in a Hawaiian shirt running along the beach belting this out. Which is ironic, because if there is such a thing as the opposite of a beach, it is surely the inside of a pachinko parlor.

Jet lag is your friend

I dread jet lag before trips and complain about it after. But the truth is, I know it's on my side. In Seattle, sleeping til 11 and up and about til 3 am was the perfect vacation schedule; I was there and hungry when a pizza delivery guy came into the dive bar where we were playing pool at 1:30 to sell off his leftover pizzas for 5 bucks a pie. Bliss.

Back in Tokyo to a ton of work, waking up at dawn this week suited me perfectly. The only time I ever wake up before 6 and feel like springing out of bed is when I have jet lag. I savor it, falling into bed and waking up on an old-lady schedule for as long as I can, because I know it won't last.

It’s not the talking escalators at the airport or the doilies in the taxis – it’s the panicked moment when I wake up groggy and realize I've overslept that I know I’m back.

I'm back.