A day in Ginza

My mother and I had a long walk and some fine window-shopping in Tokyo's Ginza neighborhood last week. Ginza is often compared to Madison Avenue around E. 57th Street. It's a mix of designer boutiques, galleries, and shops that sell jewelry, the finest Japanese classics like kimono and geta (wooden sandals), expensive crafts and other items that are coveted in Japan, like handmade paper. Here are several images from the day:

A top-drawer kimono shop.


A flower shop, presumably for weddings or high-end events...


...with sequins on this orchid and (gilded) lily!


The Ito-ya stationery and office-gadget store, which had a gazillion fancy fountain pens on the second floor. Check out the giant paper clip outside!


This shop sold modern wood-block prints and also had originals and reproductions of ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world") woodblock prints) from masters like Ando Hiroshige.


Takumi, which had carved wooden items and woven tatami mats.


In Ando, a cloisonne mecca, we liked the "green tea and tea whisk" pin on the right (but didn't care for the endless collection of boring vases).



We loved the Kyukyodo stationery shop, an apparent favorite with flocks of aging housewives who clustered outside the front door. Inside, there are rolls of gorgeous handmade washi paper for giftwrapping and craftwork, and all sort of neat paper-y items.




Here's Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton.




A stunning teal gown and matching ostrich-feather bag at Valentino... and then some gray Armani.



The Rolls-Royce at the top was very appropriate, neh?

Lame blogger!

I've been a terrible blogging correspondent, alas. I will try to do better by setting up several posts in advance.

My mom is visiting - the fourth time in 2 years - and we're having a very relaxed time. The children have three days of vacation for Japan's "Golden Week," and we're keeping it pretty low-key. Last week, when Blaine was in D.C., my mom and I made French toast and pancakes on separate nights for dinner, and, wow, the kids loved it so much that they chattered away to Blaine about it when he returned yesterday.

On Saturday, we went swimming at the Tokyo American Club. On Sunday, we went shopping in Yebisu Garden Place for birthday gifts for Lucinda's friends. Today, we went to Kodomo no Shiro (The Children's Castle) so the kids could play in the jumpy-ball thing on the roof. Tomorrow we'll have a playdate at our house.

And when the kids were in school last week, my mom and I went on some walking tours of Tokyo: to Asakusa (a very old, traditional neighborhood) and Kappabashi (Kitchen Town); to Ginza, where we looked in art galleries and stationery stores; and this Thursday, when the kids are back in school, we'll go to Kamakura so I can show her the Great Buddha.

Kamakura Sunday

We went to the small city of Kamakura, the birthplace of Zen Buddhism, yesterday (Sunday) to watch yabusame , archery on horseback, which we saw one year ago in Sumida Koen in Tokyo. Lucinda's P.E. teacher, Mr. Tan, recommended the event and we decided to make a day of it. Kamakura is just 1 hour away on a very speedy train from Shinagawa Station.

But the archery, which was great fun last year, wasn't so pleasant in Kamakura. The course and viewing terrain at Tsurugaoka-Hachimangu Shrine were completely flat; it was very crowded; and after arriving early enough to land a spot near a target - but still packed into a crowd - we had to wait for 2 hours before the contest began. And this was pretty much all we could see:




The better part of the trip was our first stop, to see the Daibutsu, the Great Buddha of Kamakura, a massive bronze sculpture that was built 750 years ago, around 1250 AD. It's usually very crowded there, too, so we left our house early and reached the Daibutsu by 10:30 a.m. The kids were fascinated by its largeness and enjoyed going inside to see how it was fitted together.


As part of a weekend festival there, including the yabusame, there were nodate (outdoor tea ceremonies) at the same temple. We watched a teenaged boy and girl make matcha (green tea) using powdered tea and a bamboo tea whisk, before several women in kimono served tea to onlookers.

Pattycake

Lucinda's latest craze is hand-clapping songs. She taught me a Japanese one recently, and I kept making mistakes! She's the expert.

Everyday Japan

Blaine also wrote a fine story, Japan Debates Digging Itself Out, about massive public works programs in Tokyo. It's amazing to live in a city where you literally cannot find a pothole and constantly see crews repaving sidewalks, repainting crosswalks, and replacing sidewalk fences that would probably last another decade.

Along those lines, a few weeks ago, I watched a man carry a ladder to each streetlight near our house. He climbed the ladder and, using a hand-held paint roller and small paint brush, repainted each 4-foot-long mint-green lamp. (A neighbor's rain-spout is slightly blocking my view.)


You would never see that in NYC.

Blaine leads the paper...

... as North Korea shoots off its missile.

Hanami

It's hanami - flower viewing - season in Japan, when people flock to parks and cemeteries and wherever to see sakura, or cherry blossoms. I'm definitely getting into it, and here's my photo-fest to prove it.

We went to Ueno Park a week ago; it's been a chilly spring, so the cherries have emerged more slowly than the Japanese weather service predicted (these predictions and pronouncements are taken quite seriously). But there was still a good crowd. You constantly see people photographing the blossoms. But how can they tell one year's trees apart from the next?


We set out a tarp, which is common in Japan, to eat the picnic lunch we bought in the Ueno train station.


Lucinda had fried calamari.


I had an obento (lunch) box with ginger beef, rice, and sauteed leeks, and a bottle of green tea.



People take naps under the flowers...


... meet friends and sit around box-tables set up for this purpose...


and have hanami parties with fellow suit-wearing salarymen.


Lucinda's entire school had a hanami lunch in Arisugawa Park on Friday.


And the children and I saw a lovely tree at a temple that's 1 block from our house.

Blaine's latest...

... stories are almost all about North Korea. It's fascinating to see how this tiny, rather pathetic, terribly brutal country can kick up such an international fuss.

This was Blaine's A1 story about the N Korean missile program: North Korean Missile Test a Growing Possibility

And three news pieces:
N. Korean Threats Grow as Launch Draws Near
N. Korea Threatens To Down U.S. Spy Aircraft
N. Korea to Put American Journalists on Trial

Happy birthday

Happy Birthday, Blaine!

Blaine turned 57 today, and his main birthday activity was waiting for North Korea to launch a long-range missile. The Japanese government announced that it had been launched and then - oops! - admitted it had made a mistake. Fortunately, North Korea didn't ruin the whole day because it says the launch will take place between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. - practically bankers' hours.

Lucinda, Arno and I made a chocolate cake, Blaine helped make chocolate frosting, and the children decorated it with silver sprinkles, leftover Hanukah candles and a big 5-7.

Springtime in a new park

Lucinda and Arno had their spring vacation a few weeks ago, and we were looking for new things to do. One new find was Showa Kinen, a vast park in Tachikawa in western Tokyo, that had gorgeous flowering trees, with blossoms just emerging, and very cool play equipment for children.

You can take a train from Shinjuku Station to Nishi-Tachikawa; my friend Laurie drove us and her children for about an hour on the highway, past Chofu, where the American School in Japan's big campus is.

This is the modern entryway. Tickets are cheap: only 400 yen ($4) for adults and 80 yen ($0.80) for children age 6+. That's only $5 for the three of us!


Central Tokyo, where we live, is mostly roads and buildings packed together, with fairly small parks and playgrounds. So it was a treat to see wide-open spaces with lawns you can run around on -- very rare in Tokyo! The children found a hill and decided to roll down it.


You can rent bikes there and there's a "train" that goes on the paved path around a lake, but we walked from place to place. Many adults, including several elderly people, were on the lookout for spring flowers. This weekend is the official high point of the Tokyo sakura (cherry blossom) season, and we saw plenty of flowers and color.





Then we started to come to the children's attractions: a big playground with bridges and passageways that Arno and his friend Max turned into a pirate ship, and a fun seesaw.


We marched through a non-narcotic poppy field...


...to the "rainbow hammocks," which Arno and Max called "Spiderman's webs." The children hurled themselves onto it and climbed and jumped for a half hour.


After a picnic lunch, we found a prime attraction: the "Bouncing Dome" giant trampoline that looked more like a moonscape. It's very sturdy, rubberized white canvas that's quite bouncy and everyone removes their shoes, so it's quite clean. At the top of each peak, there's a particularly bouncy patch.


At a smaller moonscape, I took this photo of our hair-flying group.


Next up: Dragons to climb on...


...and the "dragon's lair" rock maze (which did not prevent Laurie from checking her Blackberry).


And finally, quite tasty soft ice cream - I had the sakura (cherry blossom) flavor, while the children had choco-vanilla swirl.


Showa Kinen went on and on and on - and we didn't even experience the waterslides and summertime activities. We'll have to go back on a weekday this summer.

Painting for kids

Lucinda heard about a really fun website for kids: JacksonPollock.org

Give it a whirl or a swirl. Press the space bar to erase. Press the mouse-click to change colors.

Lucinda's violin

Lucinda has been taking violin lessons for the past six weeks and she's learned the basic four notes and fundamental hand and arm positions.



It's pretty intense because she's getting a private lesson during what was expected to be a 1-hour group lesson at Nishimachi. And sometimes it's a struggle to convince her to practice, though my friends here assure me that that's a near-universal problem for children who take music lessons.

Lucinda seems (to me, the untrained eye) to be quite good at sight-reading. I think she has a strong visual memory and fine motor skills, which makes sense considering how much she likes folding origami and practicing hiragana.

Next step: learning how to finger the strings to add the other whole notes. We'll have to see if she's willing to continue lessons past this semester.

Sushi for supper

For our Saturday-night date this weekend, Blaine and I went to Sushizen, a sushi restaurant on the 46th floor of the Caretta Shiodome building.

Sushizen is a Tokyo branch (as they say in Japan) of a much-praised restaurant in the city of Sapporo in Hokkaido. It's in Shiodome, a onetime rail freightyard near Ginza and Tokyo Bay that was redeveloped in the past decade as a "city within a city" that now has 13 skyscrapers.

I had lunch at Sushizen a few months ago with my friends Maryam Mohit and Erik Blachford, and I thought Blaine would enjoy it, too. Seriously delicious sushi - even better if you can sit at the counter and watch the chefs. The basic dinner is salad, 10 pieces of sushi, miso soup, and sorbet for 5250 yen (about $50) per person. A more elaborate 12-sushi plate is about $75/person. And there's a $100/person meal, too.

Here's our 10-plate, for two:


Top row, from left: kanpachi (amberjack), maguro (tuna), kohada (gizzard shad, with lovely silvery skin), bakagai (orange clam). Middle row: ama-ebi (sweet raw shrimp), uni (sea urchin roe), kegani (Hokkaido hairy crab), tai (sea bream). Bottom row: awabi (sea snail, I think), unagi (freshwater eel).

Miso soup was served in this silver lacquerware bowl.



And green tea and delightful green-apple sorbet for dessert.

Arno on stage

Arno's school, Willowbrook, held its "spring show" yesterday at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo, and our 4-yr-old son was very proud of his performance.

His class did a short theatrical rendition of the "Little Red Hen." Arno (in the light gray shirt) was one of three narrators and he memorized his lines and grabbed the microphone like a pro. Then he skipped and leaped around the stage to celebrate, well, himself!

It's a dual-language class and they sing two songs in Japanese. The third (and last) song, with hand movements, is one of Arno's favorites. The English lyrics are:

"Love is something that you give away, give away, give away.
Love is something that you give away - and it comes right back to you.
Just like the magic penny, hold on tight and you won't get any!
Lend it, spend it, give it away, and it comes right back to you."

Another cute photo of Blaine and Arno

Riding down to the Azabu Juban shopping street last weekend.

Blaine's latest...

... is a front-page, detailed look of North Korea's "Intractable Hunger Crisis."

After much digging, Blaine found fresh information and firsthand accounts of the DPRK's troubles in feeding its people, including the sad detail that citizens have been instructed to collect their own feces to fertilize farm fields.

Signs of the apocalypse?

The Japanese economy is tanking, and we're seeing fresh signs of trouble in our banker- and expat-friendly neighborhood:

"For Rent" signs in clothing shops.


The pricey "Ice Bar," where customers drank vodka in a freezing room and at a bar made entirely of ice, has gone out of business.


A homeless person on the street.


And grafitti outside a local building.