Kinmokusei 金木犀: this is what that smell is

Japan smells like perfume for a few weeks in the fall. The reason is the fragrant olive tree, or kinmokusei in Japanese. It has dark,　pointed oval leaves like a regular olive tree and clusters of little bright orange flowers. I don't remember ever smelling this at home. The sweet smell was so strong in my neighborhood in Miyazaki that it was almost nauseating on warm evenings. I wondered if it's ever actually used in perfume.
It turns out that it is used as a fragrance, but not very often. And this is not without reason—from the 70's to the mid-90's, kinmokusei was the only game in town when it came to toilet deodorizers. For the majority of Japanese people old enough to remember, the smell is too closely associated with bathrooms to be repurposed. Way to ruin nature!
It seems like this may be changing, though, as other scents like lavender and soap take over bathroom duty. I bought some hand cream the other day, a fall-only limited fragrance called Osmanthus. It smelled nice, but not familiar. I gave some to a coworker to try, and she looked up the name and said "Ohhhh, of course! Kinmokusei! You know that tree, right? Everyone knows that tree!"

Mister Softee is parked in Tokyo

Chocolate banana, off the secret menu

Mister Softee has joined Auntie Anne's, Ben &Jerry's, and Bubby's in conspiring to keep me well (poorly) fed in Tokyo. (Yes, there's a new-ish Wendy's, but I don't really care about it and its foie gras stuntburgers. Which, incidentally, may not be doing so well, as they had people standing on the street handing out coupons this weekend. You heard it here first!) I helped our writer put a little story about it on Japan Pulse, and then I headed over to see the place for myself over the weekend. I expected a certain dissonance in seeing that classic logo nestled among expensive Italian chocolate-covered figs, but it worked. The woman who runs it, Andrea Fisher, was very friendly and totally impressive. There's a long version of her story, but the short version is that she loves ice cream and brought Mister Softee here by sheer determination. She's also a Julliard-trained flautist and runs her own bag company and didn't stop driving her ice cream truck around Brooklyn even when an angry Armenian slashed her tires. (Alex and I left feeling excited by the reminder that there are people out there getting stuff done in a big way and more guilty than ever about our own little unfocused projects.) She's coming up with new flavors to make in their fancy mix-in machine every day. She told us a few of the ones she's working on to add to the lineup of berry, cactus and apple pie. There's one in particular in the works that I don't think I'm supposed to reveal. But I have a feeling that once she starts selling it, you'll hear about it.

Hanging with Ernesto Neto in Tokyo

This is not Ernesto Neto.

We found some very cool art to climb around in. It's a huge installation by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto hanging above, of all places, the Louis Vuitton store in Omotesando. Not exactly a place that conjures images of taking your shoes off and giggling in mid-air. You feel like you've stumbled into the lair of a space spider.
It's open til the beginning of January. And it's free! Gorgeous sunset view.
Pop into the the Louis Vuitton shop and hang a very, very quick right to get to the elevator that goes right to the Espace Louis Vuitton gallery.
Thanks to Jason Jenkins for the tip!

Death (flowers) in the cemetery

How appropriate.

I walk through Aoyama Cemetery one or two mornings a week, sometimes three. I love it. There's no place where I more consistently feel gratitude for my life here. Starting simply with being on the right side of the marble slabs. And from there to everything else: that my legs and feet and knees are cool with walking a few kilometers, that it's a pretty route, that I have a job to walk to, that it's work I enjoy that pays well, that my friendly co-worker keeps the office stocked with fresh boxes of cookies. And there's the cemetery itself. I like knowing I could take a slightly different path through it every day and not run out of variations for a long, long time. I love how it smells a little different each time I'm there, with something new always sprouting or withering. This week the hell flowers were in bloom. I'd forgotten about discovering the flowers of the dead for the first time last year until I stumbled over them near a few graves. They appear suddenly and die fast. 

Catching an unexpected glimpse of them is just one more thing to be happy about in the cemetery.

Why are you hogging the priority seats!?

Please offer the courtesy seat when someone needs it.

I dare say New Yorkers are better than Tokyoites at giving up their seats on subways. I have a few recently pregnant friends in NYC who might beg to differ. Overall, however, it seems to be more of a point of pride for people there to swap places with the injured, the elderly and the pregnant. Japan comes out ahead in adorable pole-swinging mystery critters, though, of course.

Tokyo Station projection mapping extravaganza

Tokyo Station was our first gateway into the city. We spilled off the Narita Express and into the rush-hour crowd with our bags and instructions to go out the Marunouchi Central exit. Sounded easy, but Tokyo Station was under such heavy renovation that the signs were a confusing taped-up patchwork of temporary rerouted arrows and the ground hobbled our suitcases with covered cables and uneven steel and rubber plates. That was 2008. The station has been under construction ever since. It's just about done now, though, scheduled for a grand re-opening on October 1.

They're celebrating with this big projection-mapping show. The opening and the part from about 7:15 are the best. Dinah Won't You Blow Your Horn goes on too long, and I don't quite get the magical nature and pan flutes bit. I guess they were never going to include the WWII air raid that damaged the building. Though that would have been interesting.

People who party in glass showrooms

I got invited to a party in my neighborhood for a company with a name that could as easily be a pharmaceutical maker as a defense contractor. I knew it wasn't either of these, but I couldn't remember what the industry was. The party was to launch a new product with a name that was equally opaque. The name was a combination of letters and numbers followed by a hyphen and then some syllables. I walked through the crowded rooms with a glass of wine in one hand and a paper plate of fancy cheese in the other. What was the T3-Whatsit, anyway? And where was it?

I looked in all the glass-walled showrooms for the new product the company was supposed to be showing off. Turns out they make glass walls.
— Sandra Barron (@sandrajapandra) September 13, 2012

Photo by TokyoDex

Why won't you let me out!?

I can't get off the train when others are standing in front of the door.

One of the things that makes visitors ooh and ah about how orderly Japan is is the train system. Rather, the way people use the train system. Japanese commuters form lines on the platform like iron shavings form lines over a magnetic grid. It is a tacit nod to the laws of physics, an acceptance that they cannot occupy the same space as the people who will inevitably spill out of the train when it stops. Unlike some (all) of the other cities we could name, the people waiting for trains in Tokyo keep clear a path for the people exiting the train. Once these same model citizens get on the train, though, they join the rest of the world in the belief that the inside of a train car is a magical space where the laws of physics are suspended. Once they are planted in front of the door, there they take root until they get out at their own stop. Sometimes they sway slightly out of the way like stalks of kelp; sometimes they stand firm. And it is a little enraging. Some of the kindest people I know admit to taking pleasure in elbowing their way through a stand of stubborn door blockers with sharp jabs. Imagine how much worse it would be if you were a weird little knee-high teddy bear.

Iodine gargle: do not use

Don't let the hippos fool you.

A Japanese saying reminds us that "good medicine is bitter." Bitter I could handle. "Fruity iodine," there are no words for how bad it tastes. The fruity part doesn't help at all. It's like spraying perfume over a chemical spill. If it weren't for the happily gargling hippos on every step of the instructions, I'd think I'd accidentally ingested something that was meant for cleaning metal or lubricating gears. Not to mention the second horror, when you spit it out in shock and the entire sink looks like a slasher film.  
After that one stomach-turning mouthful, I'm tossing the stuff. Having a sore throat is not that bad.
Why do we even have it? I'll tell you, even though it's embarrassing. I bought it instead of iodide tablets when the nuclear plants were looking wobbly. I knew that a bottle of iodine tincture wasn't even close. But it felt like taking a flimsy umbrella out on a day when a typhoon might hit. You know it's futile, the wrong approach altogether, but you'd feel remiss if you didn't at least try.
The pharmacist said, "It's not the same stuff, but in a pinch, it would be better than nothing to dilute and drink it. But normally, you know,  you shouldn't." What an understatement. I'd have to seriously reconsider how important my thyroid was before I'd drink that.

Commuters, take your marks!

Asics ad-bombed the entire Yamanote train I rode home from work tonight in a pretty excellent way. Everyone took the transformation a little more in stride (ha!) than you might expect.
I always knew Tokyoites would take the gold in commuting.