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.