Tokyo update
I know I don't update my log very much, and then I post a lot. But whatever, my paper journals are like that also.
As I write this, I am checked into a hotel in Tokyo and I'm eating a breakfast of natto, rice balls and calpis. The hotel is a head trip! Everything looks like it's been in use since the 1970's and is very tiny. There's a television in my room that you have to put a 100 yen coin in to operate and has 7 channels of crystal clear psychedelic children's programming and one fuzzy channel of porn with blurry censorship. I wonder which channel gets watched the most.
The last few days have been packed!
The city of Tokyo is a massive and tiny simultaneously. Ten-story buildings stretch on for miles on end partitioned by little more than narrow roads and pedestrian foot paths. everything seems to be utilized to its full extent. Utility poles are laden with coils of wires and mysterious boxes. Kitchen spaces in apartments have drying racks for dishes directly above the sink. There are millions of tiny ways that everyday needs are met with less space.
On Saturday Seiji and I went out for breakfast at Choco Coro, a popular chain with a name that is a contraction of chocolate croissant. I kept on wanting to call it Choco Rock-O. Naturally I had a chocolate croissant.
From there we proceeded to the train station. The trains and subways in Tokyo make a mockery of all SF public transit systems. They run every 3 to 5 minutes and go everywhere you want. The velocity of the trains gently reduce as they come to a stop, making it so that you don't even really need to hold on to the hand supports. Unfortunately there are a couple different companies that run the trains so there is a constant need to buy different tickets and keep track of your ticket stub. I'm a little worried about the days to come where I'll be trying to navigate the trains without Seiji.
Our very first stop was the Shinjuku shopping district. Mandarake didn't open for a bit so we wandered around to a couple different shops. There's a boutique for school girls and an endless array of ramen shops. When Mandarake's doors were opened I was quickly sucked into a vortex of wanting everything. All conceivable comics from all the decades were there. I was drawn to the stranger underground comics as if by a mysterious force, and soon found myself emptying the Shintaro Kago section into my shopping cart. All told, I ended up getting about 50 pounds of various manga. The bag was not designed for that task and really hurt my hand after a bit.
For lunch Seiji found a lovely ramen shop where the chairs were sections of tree trunks. Seiji had been invited to an informal wedding reception so we finished our salty noodle midday meal and returned to his apartment to prepare.
The reception was in the Ginza district at a club called Lobos. There we took a table with Seiji's work friends Sato-san and Hamashita-san. Everyone was smoking inside and eating diminutive servings of salami and pasta with thick baked potato wedges. Eventually the bride and groom made a grand entrnce complete with a hollywood style trailer projected onto the wall. There were also trivia quizes that Sato-san and Hamashita-san won prizes in. The were kind of gag prizes so they ended up giving them to me! Those guys, I tell ya! The Japanese are the best.
After the wedding, Seiji, Sato, and Hamashita went to a pub-like place and had some more food, since the wedding was a bit under-catered. We had yakitori, unagi, horse mackerel sashimi, oyster croquette, and oden all washed down with some Suntory premium beer.
I slept well after such a full day.
Early the next morning Seiji and I got up to meet Ben Raff at the bus station. After some anxious waiting for a phone call letting us know he had arrived, we were quite surprised when Ben knocked on the door and was in our midst.
So began day two of our epic shopping adventure. This time the tour began in ernest with many stops and purchases.
First was the Sekaido art supply store, which had 3 floors packed with everything, and I mean everything. Accent Arts has nothing compared to this place. So many Sable brushes and watercolor paint boxes! So many beautiful papers and pencils! So many markers! I also found some micron pens that are exactly the same as the ones in the USA except that they are blue and gold. Naturally everything was spectacularly organized.
Most everything in Seiji's beautiful apartment comes from the Muji store, which is like Ikea only a little higher quality and has a focus on super simple anonymity. Seiji likes to joke that everything there is black white or clear. and it's almost true! There was even a monochrome rubics cube. I naturally gorged on all sorts of items, a new toothbrush, a coin purse, and some more drawing supplies. I really wanted the Muji microwave, it's so simple and pure it breaks my heart. Hopefully Muji will expand into Japan town or something.
Then there wasthe record shops. The typical record shop we went to was a cramped single room in a building that looked like (and sometimes was) an apartment building. The quixotic and rare, bootlegs and masterpieces all were meticulously labeled with descriptions and categorized in perfect order. Some had bizarre and colorful decor while others seemed to be piles of cardboard boxes filled with noise records and noise playing on the PA (Ben actually thought it might be a vacuum cleaner). I got two roxy music bootlegs, a cd of ESG rarities, and some Japanese noise rock.
We went to Harujuku where there was a crushing crowd, pushing on people and making foot traffic almost impossible. There were cosplayers and gothic lolitas lining the streets and a many foreigners photographing the scene. We found a nice little cake shop and ate some fancy cakes while Ben bought some silkscreened posters and plastic figures. I was apparently eating my strawberry custard sponge cake incorrectly and was admonished by the cake police who ere passing by. They just wanted to remind me that eating cake is ok, just follow the law.
But still there was more! we went to the Watarium contemporary art museum and I found so many nice art books by Hinori Kikuchi. The gentleman behind the desk really liked my drawings and I think I may send him a postcard from the USA.
We went to Shibuya and visited another Mandarake which was way underground. As you descend the stairwell into the lower floors the walls look increasingly like an undersea cave and there are strobe lights that add to the impression that you are descending into the underworld. This Mandarake may have been even larger than the one in Shinjuku, but I had vastly overspent already and amazingly I resisted buying anything.
After dinner we returned to Seiji's apartment where we agreed that Ben and I had better check into a hotel since Seiji's apartment was so small and sleeping on the floor had been giving him nightmares. We checked into the Swier hotel, which in apparently a cash only establishment! I know of no hotels or even motels, that wouldn't prefer credit card, but there you have it. Japanese people love to travel with a lot of cash! So now I am out of cash, but life is not so bad, I just need to figure out how to cash a travelers check and so forth.
Ben and I bought some snacks and beers and stayed up late sketching and chatting until the inevitable weariness from the day's events caught up with us and we retired to our respective rooms to enter in a peaceful slumber.
Today I'll be going to some museums and checking out a noise concert! I'm psyched to check out the incapacitants!
As I write this, I am checked into a hotel in Tokyo and I'm eating a breakfast of natto, rice balls and calpis. The hotel is a head trip! Everything looks like it's been in use since the 1970's and is very tiny. There's a television in my room that you have to put a 100 yen coin in to operate and has 7 channels of crystal clear psychedelic children's programming and one fuzzy channel of porn with blurry censorship. I wonder which channel gets watched the most.
The last few days have been packed!
The city of Tokyo is a massive and tiny simultaneously. Ten-story buildings stretch on for miles on end partitioned by little more than narrow roads and pedestrian foot paths. everything seems to be utilized to its full extent. Utility poles are laden with coils of wires and mysterious boxes. Kitchen spaces in apartments have drying racks for dishes directly above the sink. There are millions of tiny ways that everyday needs are met with less space.
On Saturday Seiji and I went out for breakfast at Choco Coro, a popular chain with a name that is a contraction of chocolate croissant. I kept on wanting to call it Choco Rock-O. Naturally I had a chocolate croissant.
From there we proceeded to the train station. The trains and subways in Tokyo make a mockery of all SF public transit systems. They run every 3 to 5 minutes and go everywhere you want. The velocity of the trains gently reduce as they come to a stop, making it so that you don't even really need to hold on to the hand supports. Unfortunately there are a couple different companies that run the trains so there is a constant need to buy different tickets and keep track of your ticket stub. I'm a little worried about the days to come where I'll be trying to navigate the trains without Seiji.
Our very first stop was the Shinjuku shopping district. Mandarake didn't open for a bit so we wandered around to a couple different shops. There's a boutique for school girls and an endless array of ramen shops. When Mandarake's doors were opened I was quickly sucked into a vortex of wanting everything. All conceivable comics from all the decades were there. I was drawn to the stranger underground comics as if by a mysterious force, and soon found myself emptying the Shintaro Kago section into my shopping cart. All told, I ended up getting about 50 pounds of various manga. The bag was not designed for that task and really hurt my hand after a bit.
For lunch Seiji found a lovely ramen shop where the chairs were sections of tree trunks. Seiji had been invited to an informal wedding reception so we finished our salty noodle midday meal and returned to his apartment to prepare.
The reception was in the Ginza district at a club called Lobos. There we took a table with Seiji's work friends Sato-san and Hamashita-san. Everyone was smoking inside and eating diminutive servings of salami and pasta with thick baked potato wedges. Eventually the bride and groom made a grand entrnce complete with a hollywood style trailer projected onto the wall. There were also trivia quizes that Sato-san and Hamashita-san won prizes in. The were kind of gag prizes so they ended up giving them to me! Those guys, I tell ya! The Japanese are the best.
After the wedding, Seiji, Sato, and Hamashita went to a pub-like place and had some more food, since the wedding was a bit under-catered. We had yakitori, unagi, horse mackerel sashimi, oyster croquette, and oden all washed down with some Suntory premium beer.
I slept well after such a full day.
Early the next morning Seiji and I got up to meet Ben Raff at the bus station. After some anxious waiting for a phone call letting us know he had arrived, we were quite surprised when Ben knocked on the door and was in our midst.
So began day two of our epic shopping adventure. This time the tour began in ernest with many stops and purchases.
First was the Sekaido art supply store, which had 3 floors packed with everything, and I mean everything. Accent Arts has nothing compared to this place. So many Sable brushes and watercolor paint boxes! So many beautiful papers and pencils! So many markers! I also found some micron pens that are exactly the same as the ones in the USA except that they are blue and gold. Naturally everything was spectacularly organized.
Most everything in Seiji's beautiful apartment comes from the Muji store, which is like Ikea only a little higher quality and has a focus on super simple anonymity. Seiji likes to joke that everything there is black white or clear. and it's almost true! There was even a monochrome rubics cube. I naturally gorged on all sorts of items, a new toothbrush, a coin purse, and some more drawing supplies. I really wanted the Muji microwave, it's so simple and pure it breaks my heart. Hopefully Muji will expand into Japan town or something.
Then there wasthe record shops. The typical record shop we went to was a cramped single room in a building that looked like (and sometimes was) an apartment building. The quixotic and rare, bootlegs and masterpieces all were meticulously labeled with descriptions and categorized in perfect order. Some had bizarre and colorful decor while others seemed to be piles of cardboard boxes filled with noise records and noise playing on the PA (Ben actually thought it might be a vacuum cleaner). I got two roxy music bootlegs, a cd of ESG rarities, and some Japanese noise rock.
We went to Harujuku where there was a crushing crowd, pushing on people and making foot traffic almost impossible. There were cosplayers and gothic lolitas lining the streets and a many foreigners photographing the scene. We found a nice little cake shop and ate some fancy cakes while Ben bought some silkscreened posters and plastic figures. I was apparently eating my strawberry custard sponge cake incorrectly and was admonished by the cake police who ere passing by. They just wanted to remind me that eating cake is ok, just follow the law.
But still there was more! we went to the Watarium contemporary art museum and I found so many nice art books by Hinori Kikuchi. The gentleman behind the desk really liked my drawings and I think I may send him a postcard from the USA.
We went to Shibuya and visited another Mandarake which was way underground. As you descend the stairwell into the lower floors the walls look increasingly like an undersea cave and there are strobe lights that add to the impression that you are descending into the underworld. This Mandarake may have been even larger than the one in Shinjuku, but I had vastly overspent already and amazingly I resisted buying anything.
After dinner we returned to Seiji's apartment where we agreed that Ben and I had better check into a hotel since Seiji's apartment was so small and sleeping on the floor had been giving him nightmares. We checked into the Swier hotel, which in apparently a cash only establishment! I know of no hotels or even motels, that wouldn't prefer credit card, but there you have it. Japanese people love to travel with a lot of cash! So now I am out of cash, but life is not so bad, I just need to figure out how to cash a travelers check and so forth.
Ben and I bought some snacks and beers and stayed up late sketching and chatting until the inevitable weariness from the day's events caught up with us and we retired to our respective rooms to enter in a peaceful slumber.
Today I'll be going to some museums and checking out a noise concert! I'm psyched to check out the incapacitants!