Indeed

 

The toilet paper stacked at our office. A friend in need, indeed.

Pick a letter

Oh, I don't know. Just use any one.

RIP, Awaya Building

Cities change fast, but here it's really head spinning. I took a picture of this building one morning. I knew it would be torn down soon. In the afternoon it was caged in scaffolding, and by the next morning it was wrapped up behind sound-proofing drapes and a white construction wall. Now there are just trucks full of cables and chunks moving out like harvested organs all day and it's impossible to tell if anything is even still standing.

Sweet bitter

I wouldn't say you should take the Tama Express 45 mins west of the city just for a cup of hot chocolate. But, if you do find yourself near the Tamasakai train station in the land of CostCo and Cainz (a home improvement warehouse that makes Home Depot look cozy), escape from the hordes and their doublewide shopping carts at Honey's Chocolate. "Honey" is a Japanese pun on the owner's birthday. Chocolate, with the 'e' pronounced, is her specialty. It's served dark and bitter with sugar on the side. This is not easy to find anywhere, and is especially unexpected out there between the shoe warehouse and the all-purpose seminar rental rooms.
Honey's Chocolate
3-22-16 Koyamagaoka, Machida, Tokyo
Tel. 042-774-4456

How bout some quotation marks?

You have a 'good' eye for fashion.

Good idea. Just put them anywhere.

That's what happens when you drive on the wrong side

I believe they said there are 900 traffic accidents a year caused by people driving the wrong way on highways. Does that seem like a lot?

Behind door number 1

I was walking around in Ebisu last night and was tickled anew with what's around corners and behind plain doors. Marie and I were looking for a restaurant she had been to. When we got to the rough adobe building with split beams jutting out and straw cowlicks, the windows were dark and the wooden door was dusty. It was a boxy building out of place on a residential street - or any street - in Tokyo. Marie was disappointed - she said inside was a two-story teepee. We walked back towards the station, and passed a lightbox sign in front of a compact six-story building for a rock gym. We walked down the narrow stairs to the basement, and there, in a space about the size that my old NY landlady had crammed three sewing machines and a few piles of fabric, was a rock-climbing gym.
Further down the street was this amazing antiques store, packed and piled high with tin signs, grand cash registers, and threadbare stuffed rabbits and dogs. Everything rattled precariously as we squeezed between the secretaries and teetering stacks of drawers and spice racks and wondered what havoc the slightest earthquake would cause.
Finally we got to a different place for dinner, Tooth Tooth. The lighting was subtle, but the lights were anything but - steel swing arm desk lamps 8 feet tall. The place had everything you'd want in a chic Tokyo restaurant; it was tucked away, French, elegant and moody, and had a private banquet room with ornate brocade thrones and clear Louis Ghost chairs all overseen by a life-size storm trooper (1000 yen per person cover charge in that room, unlimited time). The food was good - we shared a baby lettuce ceasar salad and tender, wine-glazed beef cheek, and spicy fries - and definitely improved by the surroundings. The dessert was intense. An earl grey scented block of dark chocolate fondant drizzled and coddled with raspberry sauce and pistachio icecream and garnished with a sliced strawberry and a free-form butter cookie.
The menu was a challenge. Each item was scrawled small in French and then huge, like magic marker autographs, in Japanese. The waitress said it was hard for everyone to read.
The place is part of chain that started in Kobe and has dozens of restaurants with different names between Tokyo and Osaka. I wonder who's lurking around the banquet tables in the other ones?Tin's Collection: Kaneko Bldg. 101, Ebisu, 3-21-6 Higashi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Tel: 03-3499-2291
Tooth Tooth: Tredicasa B1F, 1F, 3-17-12 Higashi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Tel: 03.6419.2040

Sign me up

Shh. I have a little secret for riding the trains. A "hack," if you will.

When one train comes and its screws are popping out and the steamy windows are cracking and the people burst out like popcorn out of a Jiffy Pop, and then they stop coming out and there is still a solid wall of people jammed right up to the open door, I do something crazy. I step out of the way of the herd that hurls and mashes itself into the train like a physics experiment in supersaturation and I wait, alone, on the platform.

When the next train comes, usually about 45 seconds later, it is, more often than not, all oxygen and open space. Sometimes eerily so. Ahh.

Don't tell anyone.

Or a hat or a pterodactyl

"Please enjoy this as a doughnut or at teatime."

Just stick that "or" anywhere.

No, thank you

Where else would toilet paper cores be stamped with "thank you?"