Hot Tin

Food items don't usually make it anywhere near this blog of mine, but I have to make an exception because of the seductive trickery of the graphic design and also the "limited edition" aspect of it.  When I visited Nagano many years back and had the soba noodles, the red pepper condiment (togarashi) in the distinctive tin (featuring Zenkoji) was everywhere, and I had to buy one.  Fast forward to years later, and my sister, who I found was visiting there, brought back as a souvenir one of the "limited edition" tins for last year.  It was a small and fun gift and I did not give it any further thought until the recent appearance of the makers at the department store, where the new "limited edition" was in evidence.  Thinking it over whether I should pick it up (and deciding against it), Other Half did it when there was an hour to kill (and I was at home).  

Now, I wonder if there were editions before last year's, and what will be next year's edition? Oh no...the collector's mind kicks in yet again...

Next Attraction.

In my never ending quest for nonsense, today finds me after a good run of writing looking at antiques on-line.  If you are wondering, it started in the folk art section, deviated to Japanese and then to inkwells before I stopped looking altogether.  Now, you know it is a really slippery slope from desire to acquisition to collection to hoarding to out of control no money in the bank and nothing to show for it except a bunch of material junk, but I thought even more so of the accumulation of visual imagery that continues to flood and pollute the mind.  I am, of course, one of the worst people in this respect, and it is both fortunate and so unfortunate that my brain is marked with much graphic information, although at times I do stop and try to stop the prodigious intake of such.

If I didn't, it would keep going, on and on, straight to doom.  The Next Attraction, always next, next, next, it never ends.

That Old House

There was an old house nearby which always hurt my eyes to look at because of the shabby way in which it was kept.  This happens quite often, I would suppose, as the homes become like the owners- old, older, broken, and finally kaput.  It is not difficult to accept because it is plain fact, but sometimes it does hurt a little.  

So, when the old house was torn down (the majority of it), I wandered in to an area well out of sight (the remnants of a living room) and snooped around, taking a few visual memories and photographs before it was goodbye forever.  Time being as quick as it is, it was adieu inside of a day, and now there is nothing left but an empty lot.

I am sure some atrocity will take its place.  Isn't that usually the case?  I didn't make any attempt to stop it, so who else but myself to blame?  

Reveal

When one of the old houses nearby was torn down (with the ridiculous speed that this country exhibits), what was left over was not just rubble but a small Japanese garden and an old shrine.  As there are no markers of any sort, it would be impossible to guess on a date for it, but its very appearance was hidden by the house, perhaps being contained inside of it. What I do know is that in the many times I walked by it, I wondered what it used to be (the ground level being a store, but with no signage).  Again, it shows how nothing lasts forever- although I do hope that the shrine continues to be there.  Even more wonderful, though highly unlikely, is if it becomes a small park or rest area.  One can dream.

Haniwa

To say that I am obsessed with the clay figures known as "haniwa" since seeing them that many years ago would be a bit of an understatement, but to actually want to own them would be rather strange as they are intended as ritual objects and to be buried with the dead.  That they are put on display is a curious thing of anthropology and culture in general, and in specific, but I really haven't anything bad to say about this digging up of such a wonderfully humorous treasure.  There are other types of figures too, but the representative ones from the museum (the National Museum in Tokyo) with the Scream looking mouth and hand raised are clearly the mascots, in much the way that William the hippo from the Metropolitan Museum of Art is, and every bit as lovely.

Lupin

You probably know by now how much I like to chase after certain kinds of history, in particular literary landmarks of a bygone age.  This was something that was already in my blood from the very first time I visited Japan over twenty years ago, making pilgrimages to sites once occupied (or currently occupied) by such writers as Kawabata Yasunari, Tanizaki Junichiro and Soseki Natsume.  This kind of thinking and desire has only continued, and my recent trip to Tokyo found me in the one time literary hang-out that is Bar Lupin in Ginza, which I was enticed into going after finding out that the famous portrait of Dazai Osamu (a writer whose work I appreciated in my youth, though not so much now) was taken.  

It was a pleasant enough experience and unlike what I expected.  The bar-goers on that particular early evening were for the most part young, at least ten years younger than myself, with the most notable and humorous example of one clearly older and dapper dandy of a fellow with a pimp hat who had just finished a round or two of shopping at designer boutiques (something I noticed when I went to use the washroom).  It wasn't a letdown, but it wasn't the greatest, either- although I knew that it would not be a literary roundtable going on, I would have liked it to be so.  The staff were quite amiable too, including one who gave me a pamphlet of the bar, seeing my obvious enthusiasm at visiting the place.

Golden Lines

What seems many years ago but was in fact probably only six or seven or eight (at most nine) years ago, I remember going to the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures, a spectacular building designed by Taniguchi Yoshio, the architect who helped the New York Museum of Modern Art escape from trendiness and quick obscurity.  While the building's contents, Buddhist sculptures, are for the most part  giant yawns for me, the wonderful thing about the place is the design, the spaces, the mysteries inherent in lighting, display and small details (such as the following image, which is a metallic strip affixed to the gallery walls, and which shines and disappears as one walks through the spaces), a small but absolutely genius stroke.  

Brushes

Just came back from one of my increasingly frequent and ever fun filled trips to Tokyo.

Bright and early before it opened at 9am, I was there with cold drink in hand on a warm winter's day, waiting for the doors to slide open at the historic brush shop known as Edo-Ya.  My partner in crime had wanted a brush from there, or possibly one from Mason Pearson, and thinking that time was now spent in Japan, rather than idolizing the outside, it would be more appropriate to give patronage to an ongoing Japanese house of handmade production.

With brush in hand, the shopkeeper showed me a woodblock illustration by Hiroshige which depicted the street on which the shop was located (showing of course how it looked three hundred years ago).  I was excited to see that Mount Fuji could be seen, but was quickly told that was no longer the case, given all the tall buildings and other nonsense now blocking the view.  He did tell me, though, that the newly built Skytree could be seen, but that continues to be of little or no interest to me.