Promenades in Chiyoda-ku

Festive promiscuity

2005-05-16T10:13:00.000+09:00

It was fiesta day in and around the Kanda Myôjin temple in Tokyo. The omikoshi, movable shrines, were touring the adjacent streets bringing good luck all around. The crowd was thick, a sea of heads as seen from the camera lens. Omikoshi are mostly paraded by males with a few girls toughing around. A parade of sweat and crude bragging that comes as a stark contrast with everyday life. There are tiny omikoshi for children, but I saw this one exclusive women only omikoshi.

Male groping of female passengers in packed subways being now heralded as a social major concern, subways and trains operators are cloning each others in offering women only carriages at traffic dense time or late at night. This packed women only omikoshi is certainly unrelated with this issue.

Technorati Tags: Tokyo

Petit tour at Hie Jinja

2005-05-10T18:27:00.000+09:00

A petit tour at Hie Jinja - Hie shrine - near the Capitol Tokyu Hotel and the Diet building. Policemen that definitely look slender than your average neighborhood' policebox dwellers are spread all over the area. A sterile area the Hie shrine does not cheer up, despite the foliage still in Spring hues. Hie shrine has everything one is looking for on a Japanese postcard. The red pillars contrasting with stripes of white. The shining gold curled edges of the roofs, the silence blanketed by the continuous noise of the traffic outside, strange monkey faced guardians on the precinct, the Prudential Financial mighty white building in the distance, dwarfing the main hall (let's not start the yawningly usual tradition meets modern cliché),
the barrels of sake (70 liters each) at the entrance - corporations' gifts to have the gods get drunk for sure, the wisteria roofed small cluster of red tables like benches covered with plastic sheet. A surprising feature is a collection of fighting hens, alive in cages - gifts from an association for the protection of ... fighting hens. Hens from Kochi - in Shikoku I assume - good for chicken broth, better than fighting. I will never suggest you to visit Hie shrine. Too sterile to be true. It was rebuilt circa 1970. This may explain that.

On an wish wood plaque, someone wrote a strong wish to be absolutely granted a job at mobile phone carrier DoCoMo. DoCoMo Anywhere in life.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

Bunkagakuin art school

2005-05-08T08:39:00.000+09:00

The Bunkagakuin art school on top of the hill of Ochanomizu is a delicious European building that invariably attracts photographers on week-end. I took a few pictures there the other Sunday, daring and peep inside as well. There are powerful reminiscences of my high school in Paris despite the somewhat British atmosphere. This piece of article makes for an interesting reading and may wet your appetite to visit the school area.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

New Walk in Tokyo

2005-05-08T07:45:00.000+09:00

I added a fifth walk PodText guide to the collection of minimalist directions to enjoy walking around in Tokyo. The new one is a night walk that starts again from the Hotel Grand Palace and leads up to Ochanomizu then back. It's a one hour legs stretcher and mind relaxation stint going through a variety of micro areas that are very quiet at night but very busy during week days.

You can see an html version of the document here, or download a PodText version here for your iPod with Notes function integrated.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

Static mode stroll

2005-05-02T09:28:00.000+09:00

A piece of street in Sarugaku district at a stone throw of the book shops district of Kanda-Jimbocho in Tokyo. The requisite to take a still picture is to stop. The requisite to take interest and find it in the banality of an anonymous street is to stop too. Standing is still too risky though. It allows to move again too fast. The companion to flânerie mode walking pace is seating still. So let's seat down. That's were the first problem starts. Tokyo has no benches along the streets. Like dust bins, those are to be found mostly in parks. But I sat down, on a tiny piece of staircase along a green curtain of shrubs that separates the street from a junior high school. I had a bottle of tea and chocolate from a convenience store nearby. Strategy to defuse the natural conspicious look of passersby, although few they were. Stillness in the street is suspect. For the self, stillness is a conscious, focused exercise. Only birdwatchers are pre-qualified to observe the streets.

On the opposite side of the street, the grayish two-stories building is a rice shop, and probably a rare survivor of WWII bombardments. The yellow shop on the right is Kandahar, a mountain trekking goods and apparels shop that does not turn into a surfboard outlet in Summer. A rare case of single activity dedicated shop in this area. Exhausting a place could mean going through all the nomenclature of each shop and restaurants making business here that are visible on that panoramic picture. Standing still and watching allows to discover in the daily surrounding that it is still full of unknown spots.

Technorati Tags: Tokyo

No more skyscrapers

2005-04-24T03:42:00.000+09:00

The remnant residents of this tiny neighborhood of small houses in the center - that is, one of the centers - of Tokyo at a stone throw of Iidabashi station are opposing the sprouting of skyscrapers. It's a lost war already. The makeshift slogan reads chôkôsoku no more. The first word stands for skyscraper, the second is English rendered in Japanese phonetical scripting. What the residents want are the roji, that is the plain or crooked, mostly devoid of cars back alleys. Roji can be residential and cosy, but the true one shall be poor and derelict or crammed with tiny bars, eateries and the promise or commerce of sex.

The roji is the idealized topographical artifact of the good old urban days and a good reason enough to walk around Tokyo searching for such places that still exist, even drown in a sea of skyscrapers. There is a whole literature of nostalgia around the roji which can make for some fine picture books like this one.

The roji where the message calling for resistance is hanged looks like this on the following picture. An oddity in one center of central Tokyo.

Old houses Tokyo - Paris

2005-04-23T03:38:00.000+09:00

An anonymous old and derilict house in Paris facing a rare case of old but refurbished stone building in Tokyo, Kanda-Jimbocho district. The Paris house was a cheap Hotel de l'Avenir - hotel of the future - whereas the Tokyo one is the delicious art material shop Bunpôdô, just behind the big bookshop Sanseidô behind Yasukuni avenue.

Night walk from Hotel Grand Palace

2005-04-19T03:24:00.000+09:00

A pleasant night walk to stretch the legs for 30 minutes or more according to your pace. It starts from Hotel Grand Palace near Kudanshita crossing in Tokyo. The same walk applies from Hotel Metropolitan Edmont as well.

From Hotel Grand Palace, turn immediately right and walk along the avenue until you reach the Kudanshita large crossing. Turn right again and climb the avenue toward the Yasukuni shrine whose monumental tôrii - portal - should be illuminated. I never walked there too late and check at what time they cut the projectors. You can safely walk along the large alley inside until you bump into a transversal lane. You can see and go up to the shrine gates that are close on the opposite side if you wish and peek inside.

From that transversal lane, turn right, walk along and cross the street to enter a no-car small lane a little bit on your right that goes along quiet at this time schools. The path is winding a little but you basically go straight after the crossing - don't turn right along the steep slope. This residential area is very relaxing with very few cars to mare the silence.

You will walk until you bump into a wall and have no choice but to go right or left. Go left. You may see a policeman in faction there but don't worry. He is not waiting for you. After you turned left and walked for a few meters along a massive stone wall on your left side, turn right at the transversal slope and go down then opposite the street at the end where you will find a few steps to prop up you on this part of the Sotobori green lane. The view is quite nice from there. Turn right when you reach the lane and follow it until the end which is less than 200 meters. You leave the lane but go further on the same direction.

You will see on your left the nice Ushigome bridge that lays above the Sotobori outer moat and the Japan Railways track down under with the Iidbashi station building which is also a nice rare piece of countryside like architecture. The view from the bridge is rewarding. On the opposite side is the Canal Cafe which offers a nice view. The food and drinks are a no comment though so if you decide to relax there, a coffee shall be enough.

We go further round the circle by leaving the bridge from where we treated on it, walk straight until the first crossing, turn left then walk the same lane until we reach the large avenue where the hotel is located. Before that, you will see on the slope the Tokyo Daijinja shrine maybe lighted up but probably close. If you are staying in the Hotel Metropolitan Edmont, turn at the AM/PM convenience store further down the slope on your left and walk down a little bit before you see the hotel tucked in behind the avenue. For Hotel Grand Palace, do not turn but just go straight down the slope, then right along the avenue.

A relaxing walk.

Walking in Tokyo with iPod

2005-04-19T03:22:00.000+09:00

I have uploaded the first Walkin' in Tokyo Project Walk Guide to display on an iPod with Notes function. This document you can download here contains right now only two walk courses indications. The walk starts from Hotel Grand Palace near Kudanshita. If you are staying or living in the area - including Hotel Metropolitan Edmont - and you are an iPod user, I would be delighted that you test the courses that a really nice and send me feedback on the usability of this tiny trial. Also coming with this iPod document is a hand drawn map for the first walk that goes up to the Hotel New Otani via Yasukuni shrine and Sotobori outer moat green walking trail. I will create and add maps for further walks when time allows. Again, feedback is very welcome as usual.

Kanda old houses

2005-04-17T03:17:00.000+09:00

I have added a set of pictures showing old houses in the Kanda district of Tokyo. No filter, no fancy. Plain.

This is not intended to highlight the good old days when Kanda had a human sized face. You would not wish to live in any of these houses. Most often, these are restaurants possibly thriving enough to keep at bay for a while the bulldozers. Kanda is a sad place on week-end, and the sun shining today could not change the fact that here is a sad, sad place. I would suggest you visit Kanda on week days when it is thriving with salarymen and life. Some old houses are sometimes covered with copper plates. This explains the green moldy tone. Wood is replaced by stone in rare cases, and a multi-story office building in subdued colored bricks gives a glimpse at Kanda before second wolrd war (why put capital letters on this?).

For the interesting part of those buildings is that they are a rare case of war survival despite the bombardments. They also give a reminder that there was a time when the average building height was two stories. The surrounding of these buildings on death row is an eclectic but typical example of I build any kind of crap building I fancy about because I don't give a dam about perspective, the surrounding and the aesthetics at large. There are plenty of places like that, in urban Japan, and elsewhere as well. It is still worth the trip, but avoid week-ends by all means. You can go instead to Akihabara district which is located a stone throw from here, spend the money and be busy enough watching the crowd to forget that here again is a terribly dispiriting district. I could not refrain but remember sad and sorry Sundays in Paris while in Kanda on this Sunday, April 17th of year 2005.

The first picture you can see on this page is a little bit on the outskirts almost along Yasukuni Dôri avenue. The name is Matsuya, a soba restaurant closed on Sunday, but where you will want to slurp the delicious noodles and quickly enjoy the place. If you are not familiar with a soba restaurant, get there at 11:30 am before the crowd, or after 1 pm and just ask for cold zaru-soba, or even better, goma-zaru-soba with delicious sesame seeds sauce. A real treat! A nice page to read here dated 1997 but still valid.

Empty university museum

2005-04-17T03:15:00.000+09:00

In the five month since my last visit to the small, must-see Meiji university museum, the museum shop has apparently closed. It was a full fledge museum shop with original artifacts at less than average prices. What has not changed is the emptiness of the place. I brought P. to the visit and we were alone for the 15 minutes we spent there. The torture instruments and the guillotine made their expected effect. The university must have spent considerable money for this small scale museum set in the basement of an impressive steel and glass tower. A considerable amount of money to make it look like a real museum.

The museum is located in the Meiji University Academy Common building seen in reflection on this picture.

Walking from Hotel Grand Palace to Hotel New Otani

2005-04-10T02:16:00.000+09:00

This is the second post offering walking course suggestions to Tokyo visitors. This one will start again from the Hotel Grand Palace in Chiyoda ward, close to the Kudanshita crossroad. If you happen to stay in the nearby other hotels like Hotel Metropolitan Edmond closer to Iidabashi station, or even the Tokyo Dome Hotel, these walk tours still qualify. The purpose here is not to take you by the hand and indicate every other corner where you should turn and all the little streets you would feel sorry you missed if you knew. For that kind of service, consult the project Walking in Tokyo and come back to me. I assume you are staying in Tokyo with a guide book. You did some homework and consulted a few pages over the Internet. Good. Here is another one that may be a little more usable, I hope. This course was covered in more poetical way here.

From Hotel Grand Palace to Hotel New Otani via the Yasukuni Jinja shrine

This walk is a favorite of mine. Most of the trail follows a dirt walking path lined up with trees in the middle of Tokyo, and mostly safe from the busy traffic. It allows for a unique vista on the city from an unusual perspective. Our first destination is the Yasukuni Jinja shrine. By the way, Jinja means shrine so let me stop vocabulary redundancy starting from here

When you leave the Hotel grand Palace, just go on your right and follow the Meiji Dôri avenue down to the large Kudanshita crossroad. At the crossroad, turn right and start climbing toward the shrine colossal entrance.

Alternative path: after you leave the hotel, immediately turn at the first corner right and clim the steep anonymous slope that goes along the hotel and then the Philippine embassy. Have a look at the beautiful embassy from the outside, then go left, and after you pass under that elevated passageway that belongs to a school, turn right and go straight until the end of the street. The beautiful empty estate mansion you see on the left corner is my dream house in Tokyo.

The controversial shrine is the heart of nationalistic Japan. A visit to the the shrine's web site in English should make clear what is meant here. You can also read this past post.

There are more beautiful shrines in Japan than Yasukuni. But this one is especially interesting from a social point of view. Behind the central building after the majestic gate is a nice garden and a place where sumo is performed for free a few times during the year. The war museums are the incongruity of the place. Watching the people around is also part of the interesting things to do when in Yasukuni.

Leave the shrine from the side exit that is on you left when you look at the center shrine building just before you enter its precinct. The shady exit guarded by two stone lions is beautiful. Turn immediately right and follow the long shrine wall. At the first corner, turn right and follow the path that goes along the shrine's outer limit. When you come to the end of that street, go left and walk for two minutes until you reach a crossroad where a bridge pass over the railway track and the Sotobori moat. Do not cross the bridge but find your way to the strip of garden that follows the moat on the upper left side.

From now one, we will walk mostly on that elevated garden strip. Before we reach Ichigaya station, the strip ends with a small playground for kids where kids are a rarity. Go forward, past a subway entrance and cross the road just before the bridge to bum into Ichigaya station.

In front of the station entrance, turn left and walk around the right corner of the station building. Our mission is to find out where the garden strip we left starts again. If you have any sense of direction, this will be easy. After you turned right, you start climbing a street you will leave at the first opportunity at right to follow a lane that tries and go along the railway track down under. You will find the tiny staircase that props you up, back to that garden strip.

We are now leisurely walking toward Yotsuya station. When you reach there, the strip ends again and you will have to find it again after you cross the large avenue that passes along the Sophia university. I will skip all the interesting vistas you will enjoy along the way. The end of the track brings you somewhere on the left to the back of the Hotel New Otani. Follow the direction of the track you left, passing through the hotel backstage, along the hotel pool. You will enter without much knowing it the incredibly beautiful hotel Japanese garden with enticing restaurants, gorgeous pond and fishes. The best way to leave the hotel is first to get inside it.

The closest subway station from the hotel is Nagatachô. You can go back to the hotel by boarding the Hanzômon line to Kudanshita station which is the second stop.

A non stop-walk from the Hotel Grand Palace down to the Hotel New Otani via Yasukuni shrine would take one hour and a half. With all the things to see along the trail, three hours should be a minimum.

If you ever use this course overview, leave me your impressions and tell me whether it was useful.

Walking From Hotel Grand Palace to Ueno

2005-04-09T02:13:00.000+09:00

I am going to post a few walking course suggestions here. The first few ones will start from the Hotel Grand Palace in Chiyoda ward, close to the Kudanshita crossroad. Of course, if you happen to stay in the nearby other hotels like Hotel Metropolitan Edmond closer to Iidabashi station, or even the Tokyo Dome Hotel, these walk tours still qualify. The purpose here is not to take you by the hand and indicate every other corner where you should turn and all the little streets you would feel sorry you missed if you knew. For that kind of service, consult the project Walking in Tokyo and come back to me. I assume you are staying in Tokyo with a guide book. You did some homework and consulted a few pages over the Internet. Good. Here is another one that may be a little more usable, I hope.

From Hotel Grand Palace to Ueno

This walk will bring you all the way to Ueno district. When you leave the Hotel grand Palace, just go on your right and follow the Meiji Dôri avenue down to the large Kudanshita crossroad. Tôri is Dôri is, street, avenue or boulevard. Go left and start walking all the way down that even larger avenue that is Yasukuni Dôri. I suggest you walk on the right side here.

After you cross the first large crossroad, you will start passing along the bookstores that are still many in this area near the subway station Jimbocho.

Go over the second crossroad where there is a large business attire shop for men on a corner. Turn right then left at the first traffic signal.

Your are now walking a nice small lane that runs exactly parallel to the Yasukuni Dôri we left. Go down that lane to bump again into Yasukuni Dôri that makes a right curb here.

Cross the Yasukuni Dôri. We are going to climb the hill of Ochanomizu, but instead of following the large Meidai Dôri, just follow the small first slope that start heres with the Victoria sports apparel store on your right. At the end of the street, turn right, walk some more then turn left where there is a tiny shrine waiting for you.

You will climb this slope whose name is Ikeda-zaka. Zaka or saka stands for slope. This saka goes up to the top of Ochanomizu hill, right into the Ochanomizu Japan Railway station. Before you reach the top. You will see on your right the Nikolai-do orthodox church. Don't miss it.

At the top of the Ikeda-zaka, turn right and walk a little bit more to the station entrance. Go over and walk along the large and elegant Hijiri-bashi (bashi, that is, hashi, stands for bridge). The cluster of green you see on the opposite side of the bridge is the Yushima shrine. here again is a beautiful place to spend some time.

After the bridge, go along the Yushima shrine wall, cross the street, turn right on that slope that goes down toward Akihabara. After a 100 meters, you will see on your left the lane that climbs toward the - again - beautiful and red Kanda Myojin shrine.

To leave the shrine, find the back exit that is after the shrine parking. There is a small and steep staircase that brings you down between modern buildings to a new large avenue.

When you land on that avenue. Go left and walk up to the traffic light. Cross on the opposite side of the avenue and follow that small steep street whose name is Shimizu-zaka. By now you know what zaka stands for.

By now, things are really straight forward. That Shimizu-zaka will bring you all the way up, then down to the Yushima Tenjin shrine. Definitely yet another place to walk inside out and enjoy.

After this shrine visit, find your way to the large Kasuga Dôri that curbs down toward Ueno district. At the first crossroad, you will see the Ueno Kôen - Kôen standing for park. The Kôen is huge and features many museum with a zoo. The commercial streets in the area deserve a guide book by themselves, which is not the purpose of this blog post.

A non stop-walk from the hotel down to Ueno would take one hour. With all the things to see along the trail, what with the Ueno district itself, three hours should be a minimum.

If you ever use this course overview, leave me your impressions and tell me whether it was useful.

Otoko-zaka

2005-03-27T19:53:00.000+09:00

Spent some time on Otoko-zaka this afternoon, a straight slab of staircase running on a slope of Ochanomizu hill. Patches of green littered with detritus are yet a treasure trove of beauty granted the eyes focus on the tiny things. Like for instance this small - 5 mm in diameter at best? - red fruit. The missing one on the right was eaten by a bird, maybe. You can see additional pictures taken along this slope. Is there an equivalent for the French terrain vague in English? Lately, I am peeping into the interstices between building, like a voyeur under the girls skirt. Lots of small relics of the past, untouched patches of dirt soil.

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A Spree in Ginza

2005-03-20T19:46:00.000+09:00

Ginza crisp

Ginza at 10:00 am under the sun. Saturday. Bright blue. I grab my camera and shoot a few pictures at the Ginza crossroad in front of the Mitsukoshi department store. A woman waiting like us for the red light to turn green seems inspired and encouraged by my tourist attitude and props up her own camera for shooting in the same direction. 10 am. That's the time when the shops open. We came early to avoid the crowd that comes later. Through the Mitsukoshi window panes, we see the full staff of girls working for a famous brand I am not hiding - just can't remember the name - all clad in purple tee-shirts, standing the back facing the street, getting briefed in military style. Their faces reflected in the mirrors of their cosmetic trial desks make them look like an army of purple clones. After days of Minami-Aoyama commuting (yes, I am a Minami-Aoyama basher) Ginza is reaching higher stages in my biased ranking. Urban. that the key difference. We are playing rich walking along the avenue, passing by the Cartier and Vuitton boutiques, ready to spend way too much money in a few hours, the lack of it will generate a financial pinch in a few weeks. At a stone throw of the Apple computer church boutique is a tiny shogi and go sets shops where I buy a larger magnetic shogi game for more playing comfort next time we board a train or a plane. When? The Dalloyaux bakery cum restaurant lunch is no longer the super extra bargain it was, but still a good value. The cakes are ... haaa! luxurious. We are not on a discovery trail this morning in Ginza, just going through well known paths, the last one - a tradition lately - leading to a stop at the Washita shop at Ginza-1-chome. The closest spot to Okinawa in town, probably.

Tsubaki

2005-03-18T07:10:00.000+09:00

tsubaki2.JPG
Originally uploaded by Lionel Dersot.

Tsubaki - Camellia - are littering the wet side street close to the school gate. The flowers are, thick, heavy, overweighted rather. They ridiculously plump down on the floor in full bloom and quickly start rotting, with the edges first turning black. They are the antithesis of the delicate - but for me dreary - cherry blossoms coming in about three weeks from now. I think the bloated Tsubaki are way much more exciting. Way much more Asian.

Manso Mango

2005-03-17T21:18:00.000+09:00

We went to Manso fruits parlor in Kanda - Chiyoda ward. A fruits parlor is a tea lounge centered around fruits juice, ice creams and various desserts. It is the haute cuisine of fruits, a freshly squeezed, crushed or whipped glass of juice costing nothing less than US$ 9. But fruits parlors have pride of delivering the best, and this one delivers. The mango juice was paradisiac, the raspberry one forestial, and the strawberry parfait visually perfect - and deliciously light and not too sweet according to its eater. Manso is located in Kanda, at a stone throw distance from Akihabara. But the district does not belong to the Electric Town. Kanda is bland and ugly unless you start walking in the small streets to look out for old houses that miraculously survived WW2 bombs, fires and earthquakes. This is where I will walk in the coming days.

Quiet day in Yasukuni

2005-03-13T20:50:00.000+09:00

On an uneventful Sunday late afternoon in Yasukuni shrine, I have a welcome plastic cup of hot amazake in the shabby food and drink shop in the middle or the large alley that leads to the main shrine building. A group of prewar - or more precisely - war Japan nostalgic people are having a party chanting tunes of those good old days when Japan had balls and no alliance with the US. They make an eclectic lot of men, and one woman, from age between less than 30 years to 70, maybe. One is clad in old army fashion and is taken in picture, martially posing with a real sword he hold like a rifle. A real sword in the middle of Tokyo! But Yasukuni is not Japan, nor Tokyo either. Yasukuni is ultra-Japan. Here, people freely smoke cigarettes despite the smoking ban in Chiyoda ward. They all giggle, sing, congratulate each other in friendly manner. An old guy is clad in a navy commander fashion. One young cuckoo imitates empty handed the gesture of a soldier running against the enemy with a bayonet plugged on an invisible rifle. At the time of second world war, he probably was not even a spermatozoid yet. I wonder who is the current enemy. The woman sports a black blouson with the war time Japanese flag showing a red shining sun in the back and a message calling the grandchildren of Yamato to raise and be proud. When times come to call it quit, they all stand in ranks at a safe distance from the Shrine, start a song in lieu of the national anthem, military salute then profusely bowi, before starting unending rounds of thanks around and let's meet each other again. At the same time, on the opposite side around the parking, a drove of thugs, mostly oversized men in black, pass by to board an eclectic collection of benz and ominous small buses with black windows. Yasukuni shrine does not proclaim to campaign against the mafia and must also benefit from these powerful visitors. After much showing off of power, they leave the place. Later, when the shrine shops are closed and the parking mostly empty, a policeman on a frail bicycle wearing a mask as any pollen allergy sufferer around does a tour of the parking, well after the parties are over. I go back home humming "What a beautiful world", like Louis Armstrong.

A Tune for Walking in Tokyo

2005-03-05T17:36:00.000+09:00

Tokyo this morning felt exactly when we defrost the freezer from time to time. When doing so, spells of hard cold are kind of blowing out of the white empty cavity of the kitchen commodity. Tokyo too was defrosting after the snow. I left my camera behind, not on purpose. That is why I can't show how lovely the slope behind the Hilltop hotel on the Ochanomizu hill looked like under a brief dart of early Spring sun rays. Passing by that mysterious lump of wild forest snugged among university buildings, some machine started to shriek like baboons in the jungle, a perfect fit of atmosphere. Snow had almost vanished, but on a tiny mound of the white stuff, two kids were consciously making a bonsai sized snowman. I had no time to cross the enticing Yushima-seido shrine, and when back from an errand at Akiharaba, the landmarks of the hill were all calling for the attention they deserve under slow, very slow walking. After slow food, look forward for the slow walking next fad. I am inventing it right here. Practicing the art of slow walking requires time most anybody does not have. Behind Ochanomizu junior school, a cock - most probably dwelling and raised in the school - cackled all of a sudden, triggering spells of countryside memories in France. It is a marvel how a cackle can be so strongly associated with vacations in the countryside. The idea of the mostly in limbo Walking in Tokyo project was partially inspired by the deliciously fresh and nonchalant groove of the song Walkin' in New York by Brenda Russell ( in an album named Paris Rain - talk about Serendipity!!) first heard at last year's Manhattan Transfer Tokyo concert in a tropical rendering style. A song for walking in Tokyo is still in demand. Any idea? No enka please.

Walking alone, not walking alone

2005-02-17T21:27:00.000+09:00

The best kept secret for tonight in Tokyo is that Spring is definitely coming. An unexpected errand brought be in the Yasukuni shrine district in the evening. Walking alone but in the company of souls. It's a matter of focusing while watching one's steps. Exactly a week ago, we buried Mother in a cemetery close to Paris. I don't want to cash on the pathos. I don't want to hide it either. So while walking alone, I decided to bring her with me for a while by the sheer power of mind. Walking does help do the trick. The shrine is closed at night but the large alley that leads to the main building is open. Not exactly eerie, not much beautiful (in daylight too, Yasukuni shrine is hardly a fantastic place..), but a welcome large open air space to walk through. Coming from Paris just the day before, the eyes are still requiring the symmetry a European city offers. Not much a local feature here in Tokyo. The landscape architect civil servants have had the good idea to bath Yasukuni in a yellow glow of projectors. But the avenue running along the Kudanshita slope is marred by bleak white street lights that exemplify the endemic incapacity to encompass the landscape into a symmetrical, coherent approach. Enough sentencing. This said, night walks are beginning again to be a pleasant and relaxing way to exhaust the pressure after a working day. If you are staying in a hotel around the Kudanshita - Iidbashi district and looking for one to two hours unusual stroll around, I will be your guide for a limited time - and for free - around March and April. Depaysement garanti! As an alternative, you can also walk alone and bring someone in your mind with you.

Soya milk

2005-02-07T11:06:00.000+09:00

No, no. This blog is not over. Just a little bit busy. Blogging about daily life is literature, with its half truths and half lies. It took one month to correct the soya milk detour, but literature now merges with reality. I catched up and gulped it down at long last. If you can read Japanese, you can see the pun. Don't drown in soya milk though. By the way, it was quite good, absolutely unsweetened, unsalted, absolutely straight. The difference with industrial soy milk sold everywhere is mind-bogging (or is it mind-blogging?). At supermarket Fujiya this morning, they had Venezia paella! Turmeric yellowed rice with two shrimps and mussels. I love Chiyoda-ku in the morning.

Minami-aoyama provincial

2005-01-13T08:13:00.000+09:00

Beyond Chiyoda-ku starts foreign provinces. Such is the case with Minami-Aoyama where I find my trails almost daily recently. Everything is foreign. I almost wish they would check passports at Omotesando station exit. I must write a tune, a walking tune on the step of "I don't belong to this". I have found a back street trail to avoid that crossroad where young underpaid masked girl bakers surrounded by a forest of fruits are building fruit tarts in a full transparent laboratory like kitchen open to the full view of the passersby. Fruit tarts looking totally tart. It is easy to sneer at Minami-Aoyama, so pretentious, so rich and tasteless. The Prada boutique, mostly glass, is so airy that it strongly suggests the fact that maybe not even 30 years ago, the area was a provincial, outskirt kind of land with no urban roots, a flatland where locals were growing vegetables. There were rice paddies maybe. The ridiculous side of Aoyama and Omotesando stems from that very fact: a provincial quarter pretending to be urban but stinking of earth all the same. Well, the arrogant riches are certainly not supported in a good way by the tasteless architects they hire. I realized that the glazed tiles that most modern buildings are covered with is a major factor contributing to the malaise that oozes from houses that look fake if not entirely dead like tombs. Surrounded by such despairing buildings stands this one empty oddity on the picture. A provincial home where some sleeping beauty may be waiting for a kiss. The bulldozers will certainly play the charming prince in the coming years. Different in style with my dream house in Kudanshita, it belongs all the same to a vanished unpretentious yet discreetly gorgeous time of rich people with taste and provincial estate mansions spelling the quietness of the countryside.

Year of the Chicken

2005-01-10T06:51:00.000+09:00

Happy New Year of the Chicken. In Yasukuni Shrine we went. No journalist inquired whether this was an official or private visit. More than any time of the year, Yasukuni in the New Eve following days is a deep down local Japanese affair. The throng of elderly people bused from the provinces is thicker. Yakuza thugs and WWII nostalgics mingle with plain cloth policemen that are so easy to spot. Awfull amount of small coins are poured into the gods' purses for new wishes to be fulfilled this year. My 8 years old, already pragmatic as anyone around, threw in a 10 yen coin and a quick prayer to excel at rope-jumping. The small restaurant in the middle of the precinct offering the usual fare of ramen, yakisoba and oden is busy like hell. It is funny to see the patrons almost shivering under the cold despite all the thick winter coats, but relishing all the same on food that is of a definitely low quality and below the average taste when considered from a dry and nostalgia devoid point of view (avoid the yakisoba fried noodles and try instead the oden which are rather OK). The trees are now almost total black and bleak. The chickens on the exposed votive wood plates gathered from a battalion of shrines around the country make us dream of roast chicken. Plenty of roast chicken this year.

Landscape therapy

2005-01-08T04:26:00.000+09:00

I planned for landscape therapy around the previous day we left Paris to come back home in Tokyo. Paris had been simply at times too gorgeous, with low sweeping sun rays and crisp blue sky around the Montagne Sainte Genevieve, the Jardin du Luxembourg and all the never boring 5th ward area. I consciously worked at seeping the landscapes which includes the weather conditions of the moment, of everyday life in the Parisian streets, rehearsing the moments when back in Tokyo, these will have to be retrieved from remembrance, still fresh and peppered at times with the insane realization that due to the extended day a non-sleeping traveler spends through at least 20 hours commuting to airports and flying between there and here, yesterday in Paris and today in Tokyo seem to have taken place within a gap of a few hours, whereas the truth is that more than 24 hours elapsed since departure and settlement back at home. I rehearsed therefore in the small angled public park Paul Langevin along the rue des Ecoles. I also rehearsed in the taxi from Paris center to Roissy airport, taking mental notes that the bleakness of the landscape along city outskirt's roads is equal to that of the pitiful view one gets from Narita airport to Tokyo downtown. One side of landscape therapy is to check against too harsh comparison and consciously reckon that contrasts between beautiful Paris versus ugly Tokyo is not a matter of black versus white, but that beauty and ugliness are simply common features of both sides. Easy to say, not easy to experience. Try it yourself next time.

To finish with this reentry into the Tokyo landsphere, let me tell you about the one final strategy I planned right inside the airplane from Paris. A strategy of walking. I decided of a useless time consuming detour for next Tuesday when going back to the office in the morning. This detour will see me walking first toward Ochanomizu hill which shares with the hill of the Montagne Sainte Genevieve to also be a hill. Slopes and their mystery have therapeutic properties.

But before reaching for the slopes, I may also add to the physical walking therapy a tasting side by dropping by that tofu shop close by and sip a freshly brewed tofu milk cup. This, I am devising right now while writing in Tokyo.

The detour strategy has a single purpose. The direct entry into a still foreign working landscape in another Tokyo ward, and an office located right along an urban elevated autobahn - dispiriting sight all over the world - would simply be too harsh. When back into the usual landscape, it should be mandatory to first spend a few time in ones preferred surroundings, especially when the longing for what was left over there is still acute and itching. The immigration authorities could also help in that reacclimating process by stopping asking a permanent foreign resident in Japan to fill the reentry form to be handed at the airport passport control gate where an awkward question asks after all these years the stupid "Purpose of reentry into Japan". Answer: I am simply coming back home, you dumbo! Home being the place where one is living, here and now.

Away from Tokyo

2004-12-18T20:36:00.000+09:00

This blog is taking vacations in Europe and be back in about three weeks.