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Stamp rally
To brighten up the summer school holidays, Metron’s Stamp Rally 2002 is underway through 8/18. In 44 subway stations around Tokyo, you’ll find a rubber stamp chained to a small table, an ink pad secured to the table and a pile of paper slips for stamping. The game is to collect all the stamps in…
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London hours
Tod has been “working London hours” for the past week. Because he needs to communicate with his colleagues in London, he stays up late working at home til 2 or 3 am, then gets up at 10, works a little more from home and heads into the office at about noon or 1 pm. He…
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Aircon fan
I am not a big fan of air conditioning. I feel trapped when I have it on. I don’t want to leave my cool, dry room so I stay inside. Going outside–even to the veranda–is an expedition to the tropics. I’ve stopped running errands because it’s too hot. Yesterday I felt a big sense of…
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I found an inchworm
I found an inchworm creeping up the spearmint in my garden yesterday. Last week there was a slug slithering alongnear the thyme. A month ago, a caterpillar grew huge on my basil and parsley. Spiders love the bush basil. I seem to be harboring a nice little ecosystem of plants and bugs. Quite surprising, really…
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Houzuki festival
Who knew buying a plant could be such a festive event? We walked down to the Bunkyo-ku Asagao and Houzuki Festival at Konyaku-Enma shrine to get a Chinese lantern plant (houzuki) and were greeted by a dozen festival staff. They were so friendly and quite surprised when Tod conversed in Japanese. Houzuki are old-fashioned summer…
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Matsuri dressup
8:45 pm. Two girls heading off for an ice cream from the Family Mart after the asagao festival at Denzuin.
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Underground
I’ve been reading Underground by Haruki Murakami. It’s a work of non-fiction about the 1995 Tokyo Sarin Attack. Murakami interviewed people who were vicitms and members of the cult that perpetrated the attack and compiled them into a very compelling read. The attacks occurred well before I came to Japan and I never really learned…
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Focus
Do you ever get so intensely focussed on something that you forget everything else? I can do that if I’m creating just about anything–writing, filming, drawing, photographing. Today I managed to lose the entire day while rebranding a client’s website. I’m about halfway there now…I’ll try to surface here with some interesting Japan tidbits tomorrow.
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Collectible plates
I’m going to tell you a secret. Those saccharine little collectible plates you’ve been giving your mom every year on Mother’s Day? They may not be worth much. Last night at Hakunincho Yataimura, a food court featuring really decent Asian cuisine in Okubo, we asked for extra dishes. What did they bring? A dozen “Cherished…
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4 years in Japan
Today is the first day of our 5th year in Japan. In other words, we celebrated our 4th Japan anniversary yesterday. We had dinner at a posh restaurant with a view and I dressed up because it was a good excuse. Dressing up is fun and far too infrequent. I suppose if I were always…
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