Seasonal Dilemmas

It is the middle of December, but in Japan the weather was so mild this autumn that the foliage of the trees did no reach their peak until now. Viewing autumn colors is almost as important as viewing cherry blossoms in spring and inextricably linked to the Japanese feeling for the seasons as extolled in numberless Nihonron, which basically are theories about the Japanese written by Japanese to be read by Japanese in order to find out what is Japanese about the Japanese. The unseasonable warmth however has led to a terrible mix up of autumn colors and Christmas ornaments, not to mention Christmas carols that are inflicted upon everyone daring to step into any sort of public location.

Local Elections

It is quite interesting to compare the different expressions politicians or/and their consultants think will endear them to the general public. Some smiles are friendly and warm, some are inane and irritating, some border on the lunatic fringe. It also seems to be quite important to have proper Japanese black hair, preferably a lot of it.
Hair in politics might be an interesting topic. I remember the female Thai candidate who ran for local office in Ayuthaya and whose campaign seemed to rely entirely on a huge majestic hairdo that was prominently displayed even in local tuk-tuks. As if Margret Thatcher and her hairstyle, described by Alan Hollinghurst as 'a fine if improbable fusion of the Vorticist and the Baroque' (in 'The Line of Beauty'), were the embodiment of some mythical 'hair of power'. It is true that the Prime Minister's hairdo grew over the years out of all proportions and rumour has it that the Baroness was determined to outdo the Queen, in the absence of a crown with pure hair, it seems. The rivalry between the two female heads of state in the 80's is often remarked upon: Apparently the Queen wouldn't let the PM sit during the weekly audiences. There was a brief but telling newsclip on telly when Baroness Thatcher celebrated her 80th birthday two years ago. When her car drove up to the Mandarin Oriental, she had to use a walking stick and was supported on one side. The Queen, sitting in her Bentley behind her obviously saw this display of frailty and as if to make a point of it, she burst out of her car, literally 'jumped' out of it with a victorious smile.....

Backstage

As I am currently re-reading Goffman's brilliant 'Presentation of Self in Everyday Life', I thought this picture might be appropriate. It is a view of the stage of the National Theatre in Hanzômon, seen from backstage. While many houses in Europe and America are designed to be representative of the inhabitant's taste and sophistication (and often horribly fail in doing so), Japanese interiors are to a much larger degree 'backstage' to their presentation of self. It is not very common to entertain guests at one's house and if one does so, the guest only enters the small part of the house that is made representative through preparation. Interestingly, that space for formal visits is usually not used by the rest of the family at all. It always struck me as slightly odd that my hostfamily and me would sit in the crammed kitchen while there was a large empty tatami room just on the other side of the corridor. Over time I realised that it is precisely this backstage setting that made me part of the family and that I sometimes disrupted by being to formal and polite.

Treacherous Objects

How we are depending on objects to convey the 'right' message to those who see them as belonging to us! I remember a birthday party of a friend in his new, self-remade flat in Stuttgart. As an architect and 'Bildungsbürger', he paid utmost attention to all details, from the lavish art tomes on the bookshelves to the miniature reproductions of antique statues. There was, however, on the central shelf of a glass cabinet, a small Egyptian obelisk complete with hieroglyphs in rather too colourful shades. It stood out like a sore thumb among all the rest and I was drawn to it almost magically. I felt a peculiar thrill at immediately finding the object that by not belonging there exposed some of the pretence and at the same time was shocked by being such an interior Nazi. As the evening progressed and everybody got blissfully drunk, I asked the host about this 'éclipse du goût' and he confessed that the obelisk was one of the few concessions he had to make for his much younger boyfriend whose possessions and 'youthful taste' were apparently underrepresented. When I later met the boyfriend himself, I couldn't help but feel that he shared the obelisk's lot in this artsy, 30-something crowd.

Tokyo Landscape V

This is the view from the top floor of the Tokyo University Library in Komaba where I sometimes ponder the more irritating problems of rubbish fieldword. You can see the Park Hyatt's triple towers followed on the far left by the Tokyo Opera City in Hatsudai.

Tokyo Landscape IV

It is still unseasonally warm and pleasant. This is Ochanomizu at 8 o'clock in the morning. Looks almost picturesque for Tokyo.

Tokyo Landscape III

Early winter sunset over the Park Hyatt, Shinjuku's recent new landmark building. The hype created by Sophie Coppola's film 'Lost in Translation' disguises that fact that it is done in a rather bland corporate style. Rumor has it that there is a huge pool under one of the glas pyramids...

For Those in Need of Cheering Up

DO you sometimes feel you are the most overeducated, useless person on the planet? Do you fear you are too intellectual to sustain an everyday conversation without drifting off to the problem of transubstantiation or Foucauldian anecdotes? Do you suffer from 'the lonesome Oxbridge blues'? Then I suggest you go and read the personal ads in 'The London Review of Books'. You’ll feel redeemed and charmingly reassured of your own averageness.

A little sample:

'The song that most puts me in the mood for love is Rick Dee’s Disco Duck. Woman, 54, clinging desperately to the erotic undertones of a 1976 historical society Christmas party chance dancefloor encounter.'

'Previoulsy affable, now largely intolerant and recently divorced woman (34) WLTM a bloke my age who doesn’t spend 15 hours a day pretending he’s a heroic blacksmith killing stuff in some other-dimensional village resembling Cottingley circa 1902. Talk to me, not Olaf the Destroyer.'

And my personal favourite:

'I am not as high maintenance as my highly polished and impeccably arranged collection of porcelain cats suggests, but if you touch them I will kill you. F, 36. Likes porcelain cats.'

Tokyo Landscape II

This is the NOA building in Azabudai, shot through a cab window. With its red brick base and lip stick shape it is a peculiar appearance in the jumbled faceless cityscape of Tokyo. It was designed by Shirai Seiichi in1974 and has in my opinion grown old rather more gracefully than many a postmodern concoction.

Tokyo Landscape I

This is one of the buildings next to Shinjuku station no one ever notices. But on second glance it is actually quite interesting in a 60's sort of way. Could be a villain's headquarter in an early James Bond film.

Dog Couture in Roppongi Hills at 8 pm

Summer Heat

You might be under the impression that this is lovely August weather over the Tôdai Komaba Campus main entrance. You cannot feel the heat that strikes you like a wall when you leave your air-conditioned shelter. You cannot feel the way the air seems to thicken into liquid form over asphalt. Summer is the time of the year when you realise that sunlight is the enemy.

London-Blackpool

For reasons too complicated to describe I find myself in Blackpool early one Sunday morning, with Toby and a rented car. The waterfront is very attractive in a crumbling, almost Eastern European sort of way. As an archetypical working-class resort, Blackpool is overrun by hen parties in improbable outfits on their way to drunken oblivion at 10.30 in the morning. It is also quite rough and full of topless, manky, pale, tattooed, swaggering chavs who slap their bling-wearing, peroxyd-blond, betablocked screaming girlfriends in front of their hyperactive, raging, clueless kids.

Berne-London

Ah, the glory of London. One nip down Old Compton Street and you can return to wherever you are from reassured that they are still there: the bald butch, the old queers, the emaciated Prada Nazis, the punks, hipsters, Goths and flyer waifs mixed with a liberal sprinkling of lesbians of every creed and the odd tourist marveling at the complexity of it all.

Tokyo-Berne

There is no greater relief than to be off the packed plane and into a warm, balmy, summer day at the main station in Zürich. As the train pulls out of the station, I listen to Beethoven’s Rasumovsky quartet and everything seems just right, as if the twisted wheels of a complex mechanism had suddenly sprung into place and clicked. Even the war-related newspaper headlines in front of one’s very eyes seem very far away and a quick glance out of the window over the summery landscape of golden corn fields will reassure you that this is what’s real and what matters and that everything unpleasant is remotely removed. As if under Sylvia Plath’s bell jar were a place where you actually could breathe.

Avantgarde Performance at Kichijoji with the 'Shibusa Shirazu' orchestra

New Home

This is where I live. Follow the pictures to my house...

In the Empire of the Cute

The Inokashirasen must be paying Sanrio a massive amount of royalties for the use of Hello Kitty on its trains. The mouthless, featureless, expressionless kitten warns children to stand away from the doors and not to get their fingers jammed.

Tokyo Tochaku

After a depressing last week in London and a tearful goodbye with Toby things finally started to clear up after a) was upgraded to "executive class"at Heathrow and spent night in seat/bed convertible thingy chatting to rather attractive stewards and having four course menus at 10`000 feet, b) bumped into Mikawa Kenji at the foreign exchange in Narita airport (he is a very well knowndrag perfomer/celebrity TV person) and he gave me adirty look before sashaying past in a billowing coat, and c) I spent my first night in Tokyo getting utterly sloshed in Shinjuku nichome which happens to be just across the street from my hotel (I say incidentially because you never can tell as addresses are completely random. nichome literallymeans second block of Shinjuku, but the hotel is in the fifth block...whatever) and talked to random people(drinking does help the Japanese to loosen up a great deal, almost to a fault I must say though).So after affirming myself that there is enough fun to be had for at least a year I set out to start looking for flats....