natasha nakamura's diary

People who find cause to speak to me in English in spite of my more or less Japanese features often apologize for what they call their "Japanese English." I invariably can understand what they are getting at because they never try to say anything complicated and in fact their communications can have a certain charm, so what's the problem? Is Japanese English so much different from French English or Sicilian English? Or for that matter is Des Moines English much different from Chattanooga English or Birmingham English? The answer is - of course it's different, but so what?

When somebody says "Sayonara, baby," is that English Japanese? I guess.

English is a vigorous language because pulls in words and phrases from other languages. It is only language schools in Japan that have a vested interest in convincing people that they will somehow be looked down on if they don't speak the English the schools are prepared to teach them - for 4,000 yen an hour. A language-school ad on the train insists there is a crucial difference between "to go up" and "to climb." Fuggedabowdit!" 

Preparing platters of sashimi

natasha nakamura's diary

If you know where to look, such as in the basement of almost any large department store, Tokyo has as good or even better sliced ham and sausages as you could buy in Munich. Mustard - no problem. Ten years ago there was still a bread problem, but no longer.

I have found only one thing that Tokyo lacks - cans of baked beans to be eaten with frankfurters. Evidently, baked beans are not easily found Even in US supermarkets these days, except of course in New England.

natasha nakamura's diary

If you know where to look, such as in the basement of almost any large department store, Tokyo has as good or even better sliced ham and sausages as you could buy in Munich. Mustard - no problem. Ten years ago there was still a bread problem, but no longer.

I have found only one thing that Tokyo lacks - cans of baked beans to be eaten with frankfurters. Evidently, baked beans are not easily found in US supermarkets these days, except of course in New England.

Here at the pet shop, you can choose what food you think your dog would prefer. Detailed explanations are offered.

natasha nakamura's diary

Desiderata:

1. A man to live with. What sort of man I am not prepared to specify now but I know I will know him when I see him. Possible minimum requirements: he buys interesting CDs regularly and plays them during dinner; most days he prefers to make his own breakfast; he is clean and energetic and literate and naturally sympathetic.

2. A house to live in. It can be a very small house, perhaps as small as the 5.5-meter-square house designed by Architect Hagiwara, in which case there will have to be a basement with shelves along the walls for CDs, books, and curios. The house should not be in a fashionable neighborhood like Jiyugaoka, but in an emerging neighborhood we can work to make our own.

3. Money enough to travel abroad at least every other year.

4. Children? Maybe, but at least a male pug or French bulldog or Boston terrier to perhaps be called "Looie." (100,000 yen at a pet shop in Roppongi or Aoyama, which is cheaper than children because they don't have to be educated.)

5. The possibility of maintaining a small sailboat of classic design at Zushi.

I feel that for reasonably hard-working people in an affluent society, these are reasonable requirements.

Desperate decoration

natasha nakamura's diary

If you were lucky enough to be able to live any place in the world you want, the place you would choose would tell a lot about you.

Put simply, I have chosen to live in Tokyo because I like things to be done right, with proper attention to detail. This does not mean, I think, that I am obsessive, only that I like to be able to feel free to think of other things than if the train will come on time or that my dinner will be served gracefully.

On the other hand, to live in Tokyo is to give up the delights of irony.

Shibuya Station

natasha nakamura's diary

     In England, fox hunting is an ancient sport. Tally ho! 

     I propose a new sport for Tokyo: crow hunting. Crow's survival skills are finely tuned. They fly away if you look at them so it wouldn't be anything like shooting pigeons. We could shoot while riding a bicycle and use rifles of small caliber, perhaps even upgraded  bb guns. After the hunt we could gather at a congenial izakaya to celebrate our kill.

Tokyo is a great, great city for used books, like this store in Jimbocho.

natasha nakamura's diary

The case for living in Tokyo is simple. It is a complete and very congenial city. We have the magazines, the books, the food, the music, the design, the fashion, the little and big theater (like the Spanish National Ballet the other night), and the galleries that New Yorkers, Londoners, and Parisians think is their special province. It is true that we do not have the architecture of those cities (because the city was leveled during WW2, but we do have our own brand of patchy, quirky architecture and many world-class buildings are now being built).  We don't have political discussions in our cafes or little drinking places (because Japan has essentially no politics)--Tokyo  talk is a familiar tune hummed together, not a chess game. But we have here things the strident cities of the West don't  have because nobody abroad calls for them, like hand-carved toothpicks and a police box in every neighborhood to answer questions and give directions, that make Tokyo the city it is…

Dog haircuts, maybe once every couple months

natasha nakamura's diary

  "To  be human is not to know one's self. The "I" that we confidently broadcast to the world is a fiction, a jerry-built container for the volatile unconscious elements that divide and confound us."--from a review in The New Yorker of a new play by Michael Frayn.

Exactly! The word "I" suggests a single, immutable entity. But I am a different person every day and I glory in this because it means I am alive. Certainly I am different on a rainy day and a sunny day. Most people are, in fact, but it frightens them so they don't like to admit it.

Who is the real "I"? you just have to make yourself up as you go along.

natasha nakamura's diary

Tokyo seems more casual (more thoughtless?) than when I lived here three years ago. Kids sit in the middle of a sidewalk  mindless that they are blocking traffic. Motorbike raiders wear their helmets slung off the back of their heads, just keeping within the law. But maybe this loosening up will in the end have positive results. Tokyo seems stiff after New York and Paris. Stiffness (or call it discipline?) has advantages when trying to operate within a complex society, but stiffness in an individual leads to loneliness, to associating only with other stiffs.

natasha nakamura's diary

Where are the posh neighborhoods?

Tokyo has always been a city where everyone lives together. True, the samurai sometimes had large houses--castles, even--with walls around them, but stacked up right next door where the houses of the hoi polloi and factories making fish paste. There was no such thing as a "good" neighborhood.

This is still true, generally, although train lines like the Toyoko Line and the Inokashira Line have discovered that some people like to live in communities with sidewalks and straight roads lined with trees, and will pay for the privilege. Thus, Den-en-chofu.

But still, it is difficult in Tokyo to identify where the money is: the city remains a great jumble.

Here are some clues as to where the money is:

--All trains, including all expresses, stop at the station, which may in itself be of some architectural interest. The posters in the station advertise musical and theatrical events in the city.

--A portion of the cars parked at the station are BMWs or similar.

--There is probably a wine shop, a cheese emporium, and a French bakery in town.

--A portion of the kids coming home from school are wearing the high-collar black uniforms of private schools.

--There are no street carts selling ramen noodles.

It may not be obvious, but there is money in these neighborhoods. The vast majority of Tokyo is bemused by such towns, but finds them generally devoid of interest.

Neighborhood shrine

natasha nakamura's diary

A couple months ago, Maximilian kindly brought me from San Francisco a pound of coffee beans. I don't know where he got the idea that we are deprived of first-class coffee beans in Tokyo--I'd say we have easily to hand as good coffee beans as Wien.

But you know how it is. The sack of unground beans lay on a top shelf in the kitchen until just the other day when I found time to go to the little shop I buy my very fine coffee beans from. I was going to ask them to grind my San Francisco beans for me.

They looked at my beans critically. They smelled them. "I'm very sorry to tell you that these beans are old. Please understand that we couldn't ask our machine to grind them for you. They would contaminate our machine."