natasha nakamura's diary

August 23

There has been an explosion of Japanese restaurants in New York and in Paris--over 200 in Paris, Naoko tells me. But they are just the fashion of the moment. Nobody seriously apprentices themselves to a Japanese restaurant in New York and the NY markets support Japanese restaurants only as an afterthought. I guess that I'd have to admit that one of the reasons I've moved back to Tokyo is the authenticity of the food.

Yes, and what color were you thinking of, sir?

natasha nakamura's diary

August 19

After the typhoon, a heavenly day. Clouds are a gift of nature. Perpetually clear blue skies would be as boring as perpetual smiles.

Tokyo bicycle manufacturers understand that brakes applied delicately should let off a small squeak like a whisper in the ear, to warn people walking ahead that a rider would like to pass. The sound of a bicycle bell is  too crude, too insistent.

It is rare to see a balcony without some flowers in the corner. They are not there to enrich the lives of the residents, but to give a little lift to passersby.

"Beverley Hills Polo Club" says a man's t-shirt. I wonder if there is such an entity and if so, why does this man so identify himself. Does he expect people to come up to him and introduce themselves as fellow polo enthusiasts?

Tokyo is held together by wires.

natasha nakamura's diary

August 16

Some things have remained the same.

People still fan themselves with fold-up fans when they're hot. We still have our collapsible umbrellas, thank god, foreign un-collapsible umbrellas being too large to carry without a swagger. (I see that MUJI sells a collapsible bike, a fine idea.) Train stations still have tucked away somewhere a discreet little vase of flowers. There is still Pokari Sweat. The trains still give out super-polite announcements of the next station and which side the doors will open on, in a diction so soft to my foreign-language-tuned ears that it seems childish.  Women still hang cute little dangly things from their bags. They still paint their toenails gaudy colors but have taken to applying glitter to them--ugh. (Might as well apply glitter to their eyeballs.)

At any rate, it's good to be back. The apartment is small--just room for two chairs and a small table, but after all, small apartments are a lot easier to take care of, and the rent is cheaper than a reasonable place in either New York or Paris because apartments in those cities are larger than they have to be if all you use them for is for sleeping and a place to keep your clothes.  

natasha nakamura's diary

August 12

Young men primp their spiky hairdos without embarrassment. Some dye their hair blond, afflict fanciful facial hair, have their eyebrows sculpted, and dangle things from their ears and noses. It is too easy to say this masculine concern for effect means Tokyo is culturally adrift, but the fall of Rome does come to mind.

Tokyo seems to have become a coffee-drinking city while I've been away, with all its Starbucks and Starbucks clones. Let us contemplate the difference between "tea-mind" and "coffee-mind".

It's going to take me a while to come to grips with this Roppongi Hills thing. It's as though some master planner plunked an aircraft carrier designed by Mies van der Rohe down into the middle of a familiar old Tokyo neighborhood. It's just too enormous for an intimate city like Tokyo. There are good things there, though, such as the fine restaurant called L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon, where no reservations are taken and everyone sits at the counter, so you can look right into the kitchen and keep an eye on things.

natasha nakamura's diary

August 9

Some things have changed.

Is it just my imagination or have women's breasts grown larger? They are certainly more prominently featured in ads on the trains and on the covers of the titillating weeklies. There are more cafes, some even with a few seats outside. The new Odeo Line has clicked into gear: each station has its own design motif--there's nothing so splendid in NY or Paris, that's for sure. (My heart goes out to the poor souls who have to ride those rumbling, crumbling commuter trains from Greenwich to Grand Central.)

There is some fine graffiti now, as for instance under the Tokyu Line tracks from Yokohama to Sakuragicho. Grocery stores are stocking more spices and condiments from abroad and there seem more little shops selling things which foreigners would find "smart," such as well-designed kitchen implements. (I ran across a store in Harajuku that's nothing but chairs from all over the world, artfully arranged. It looks like a chair museum.)

natasha nakamura's diary

6 August 2013

Friends ask me why I've returned to Tokyo after two years in New York and a year in Paris. It's their way of starting a conversation. I know they aren't really interested in my reasons, even if I could tick them off. The simple fact is, I'm back because I'm more comfortable in Tokyo than I was in either NY or Paris. People who live in New York seem to feel they have to be living evidence that New York is cultural capital of the world, so they tend to talk too loud. It is a very alive city (just as a battlefield is alive), because everyone feels this is their chance to make it, but the buildings are too high and the streets too straight, which is confining, although nobody will admit it. I suppose I'll go back from time to time--great galleries, terrific theater--but I don't want to live that way. I just naturally suspect anyone who tries too hard to impress me.

Paris is a fine city, of course. Triumphant architecture, a lyrical language, sharp people with character and wit, and lots of cafes for talking and reading and writing. But Paris is awfully small (every city is small compared to Tokyo…) and after a while the sweep of the  architecture at every turn becomes oppressive. In Paris, nothing ever happens by accident, although sometimes people pretend it does. And the French have their own brand of arrogance, more sophisticated and so more provocative than down-home American arrogance, but still tiring in its demand for attention.

So: back to Tokyo, Can't be blamed for wanting to come home, at least for a while.

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Seen around town on t-shirts

Exchanging

Delight the 

Happiness

Refined utmost

STANDARD FOPPERY

* Brightness *

No more cry

Look ahead

Grandeur is dead  (silver lettering on purple t-shirt)

Surfing is my life            (wearer leaning against wall 

It is my perfection reading a paperback novel) 

SHARK 

INFESTED

WATERS     (on young girl with t-shirt off one shoulder)

Every Calamity is    (on hoodie)

    SPUR        

Vegetable market sign

Technical seating in the subway.

Check out

When we're finished roaming the aisles of our supermarket, plucking off the shelves what we need and jamming everything helter-skelter into a plastic basket, we proceed to a checkout lane.

The checkout lady, a bandana around her head, smiles and bows and starts to ring up our purchases. She calls out the price of each item as she rings it up and just to make sure we're on the same wavelength the price appears for us on a digital display.

As she rings things up, she carefully arranges them in another basket: she puts the lemons together in one corner, the can of onion soup next to the can of clam chowder. She puts the quart of green-tea ice cream into a plastic bag of its own and the three ears of corn last so nothing rests on them. This careful, not so say artistic, arrangement seems a gentle reproof to the jumbled pile we gave her. I later ask why such a careful arrangement, which after all does add some seconds to to the checkout process in a busy supermarket, is tolerated. I am told that supermarket customers expect it, that they would raise an eyebrow if it were not done.

This, even though at the end of the transaction we must take our carefully arranged basket to a quiet corner and transfer our purchases to bags of our own that we have brought with us. The supermarket, in an economy measure, does not provide its customers with paper bags. Everybody understands this and now brings their own bags.

--Eliza 

English-language inscriptions seen around Tokyo

Helps Wanted--in shop window

World Beans--in window of a cafe

I love drug's stores--on a shopping bag

FOODIUM--name of a supermarket

This way to Downward Escalator--officious sign in department store

Clean Shop--dry cleaners

Foot massage

Wall around Imperial Palace