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?