Beautiful Buildings!

Going to museums and galleries in Tokyo is a huge pleasure. Even when the exhibitions are nothing to write home about, the buildings are almost always completely gorgeous, especially when stumbled upon suddenly, rising out of a not-that-inspriring skyline. Caught in a very rainy Ueno Park on Saturday, the International Children's Library's atrium beckoned like some kind of holy grail

And it wasn't only because it had three floors choc-full of delicious looking picture books from Japan and everywhere else: looking into rooms through the renaissance-style building's glass additions made me feel as if I was looking into the past, or into a huge scale doll's house!

The Ueno Music Festival Hall was so much like the Royal Festival Hall on London's Southbank that I had to do a couple of double takes

 An extremely welcome rain-shelter at least. And even more so when a Kappa came up to say hi

And from there, things only got more impressive. The Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art was like another world - part aircraft hangar

part enormous scale Addams Family House complete with giant nooks and crannies

And to top it all off, the exhibition of impossibly tiny Hina doll accessories (think Sylvanian families done by master craftsmen) at the Nezu Museum were fun, but the building itself, designed by Kengo Kuma, was the highlight for me. Even before you get inside, the bamboo walkway reminded me of real bamboo groves

and the gorgeous garden

became my personal playground

...shared with an elephant deity

...and a very cosy looking  fish



...or two

There are some days when a tourist is exactly what you what to be!

Burning! Festival, Shimokitazawa, Sunday 1st April

I would have called 'finding the best record shop in Tokyo right on my doorstep' a good day's discovery by itself

but discovering Disk Union was just the beginning. I only went there to buy tickets for the Chazawa Dori Burning! Festival which was on later that day, and by 10 that evening, I'd seen 10 very different unsigned bands play at three different venues which I also never knew existed (and were also on my doorstep) for about £20 including drinks.

I was in for a varietous afternoon.

An afternoon which got off to a slightly shaky start with Keen Monkey Work playing some Japanese hip-hop (well, I think that's what it was). Then, at a venue so small even the shop next door didn't know it was there, we got Diego - quite cute, teenager-y summer holiday music which would have been pretty good if the guitarist had been in tune. Back down the road again, and moving quickly on from RoboAfrica and Rockbottom, we were back where we started watching 3Q3Sin w/Senna do some more Japanese hip-hop behind and very stangely positioned glass wall.

So far, so, erm...well, there were free drinks.

Then the evening started to warm up. Manchester School's shark fin was their energy - they jumped around like they were in a packed Glastonbury despite the audience being a very polite about 20 people. The guitarist stage-dived into open air and played the rest of the sone lying on his back on the floor. And then, the lead singer took all his clothes off. I took a picture, but I'm not posting it.

Madly tight, intensely energetic, with riffs insired by Super NES soundtracks, Hosome from Osaka were the highlight...

...even though their very cool t-shirts had sold out. Taihen!

This clip doesn't really do them justice

How to Count One to Ten were the perfect way to end the evening - instrumental big fat whimsical pop rock which distinguished itself by the fact that all the musicians were brilliant (despite their stage presence being held hostage in Timbuktu, or perhaps on Mars):

I didn't want to like them - the boys all stood together in a huddle and the girl bassist holding the whole thing together was little more than an unseen rhythm sections in the corner, and there weren't nearly enough vocals for me - but I did.

Exhausted (and not a little tipsy), ears ringing, I went home. It took 5 minutes on foot. I love living in Shimokitazawa.

More video clips here

Book Waterfall!

Finally - there is now a rather flattering artistic expression of the inside of my head (provided at least 60% of these really are Japanese textbooks, trashy fantasy, noh and folk tale collections)

Courtesy of the brilliant artist Alicia Martin, via Boing Boing and My Modern Met.

Of Kappas and Cucumbers

There are lots of famous supernatural creatures in Japan, but my favourite (but only just ahead of Tofu Kozo, Adzuki Arai and the nightmare-giving Nue) has to be the Kappa. They live in water, like frogs, but they look more liked a turtle crossed with a man who looks a bit like a duck. They love to play pranks - some harmless, others much, much less so. Children are warned, when they're small, not to go near water (which has to be fun for swimming teachers all over Japan...)

People make extremely funny, slightly rude musical films about kappa: Underwater Love (onna no kappa) is one of them:

My friend claimed to have won the lottery because of the cute kappa charm we bought her from Kyoto in January, which looked something like this

Kappa even have a 'maki' sushi named after them

And here's where we get to the heart of the matter. I love kappa because they love CUCUMBERS almost as much as I do. This pic from Boing Boing would be food porn to us:

There are five cucumbers in the fridge right now. This time tomorrow, who can say how many will be left? Seventh heaven in Setagaya. Mmm.

My Noh Notebook

One of the (many) best things about being in Tokyo for me is being able to see as much noh as I want. It's one of the few things you absolutely can't get in London. But two weeks into being back, I hadn't actually been to see noh, live! Some people might say I hadn't done too badly - I'd seen some noh video clips while I was working at the National Noh Theatre, and had lots of fun at both kabuki and kyogen shows - but for me, nothing but a proper afternoon of noh was going to scratch my 'traditional Japanese arts' itch.

Luckily, the last Sunday of every month is 'normal noh day' at the Kita Nohgakudo (the school I belong to, hence my being able to afford tickets) in Meguro. I love going there: the only Kita noh days I've missed since last September were because I was in London.

Noh: the strange awake-asleep atmosphere, the music I don't think I'll ever be able to do justice to describing in words, the fact that no video or photos are allowed in the theatre, AND the dearth of great noh 'action pics' to nick off the internet, make my monthly outings rather difficult to post about! Taihen (oh dear)! What to do?

I got my thinking cap on. When I took it off, 'draw' popped into my head. Seemed as good an idea as any.

So, I decided to resurrect my long dormant schoolgirl drawing hand and start sketching during the performances - pencils are one of the few things they allow you to take in with you. Here are some early ones, not much more than graffiti in my Japanese vocab book, from January's performance of Tsunemasa, (ghost of a famous lute player laments the manner of his death) Mutsura (a poem gives a maple tree eternal life and enightenment) and Tosen (chinese official rescued by his children):

This month, I had a bigger notebook and an itchier hand, but a slight crisis of pens. My red editor's fineliner pen held up ok through Kiyotsune (ghost of famous war hero tells his wife about his torments in warrior hell)

but before the afternoon was over, the red pen ran out, so I had to make do with black biro for Rodaiko ('The Prison Drum' - a wife is imprisoned and driven mad on behalf of her samurai husband, but eventually released by the Lord of Matsuda)

and Kuzu (emperor Tenmu's life is saved by an old couple who later turn out to be gods)

The only annoying thing about noh theatres is that they are never near any shops. Next time, I will (try to) remember to bring some proper pencils!

Blow-up dolls and Floating Globes: Roppongi Art Night 2012

Roppongi Art Night was full of the most incredible collection of inflatable installations, ranging from the billowing (but ever so slightly lame) cross-between-marilyn monroe's-skirt-and-a-giant (clean) tapeworm

to something made of the same material which, with some fibre optic assitance, looked rather more fun

and a giant blow-up 'Hanako' doll (traditional doll from Tohoku), which was so polite (it kept on saying 'have a lovely time' in Japanese) that you couldn't really get annoyed with how 'teensy bit uninspired' looking it was.

And it was fun to pose with, too, even though her makeup was clearly a lot better than mine

But the 'inflatables' theme entered a whole new league whenever we came across anything by Yayoi Kusama, star of the show and creator of the amazing Pumpkin, which was on display last night at Tokyo's National Art Center

But, brilliant as it was, for me it was overshadowed by her new polka-dot wonderland piece Footprints of Life, on display just down the road at the Design Site

The inflatable (looking) sculptures rose out of the lawn and were actually rather cute... except that they also reminded me of the spooky, menacing one-eyed dream-boulders in Catherine Storr's Marianne Dreams. Eep!

Eventually I overcame my moment of terror and immediately wandered off on my own and almost got swallowed up by some other giant thing out of someone's brain

Luckily I escaped just in time for the main event - another Kusama creation, following the 'giant blow up doll' theme, but this time inspired by Lego

she even came complete with her very own pet dog! Aww.

The darker the sky got, the better everything looked. A quick turn round a maze or two (and a incongruously Japanese dinner (even the prices were in kanji) considering how international the area is) later, what better final view than this firefly balloon pond which seemed to absorb and deaden the cheers coming from the giant lego stadium round the corner.

A tranquil romantic end to a busy night!

A Guide to Noh - Volume 1!

Editing this english language book of noh play summaries hoovered up weeks of my time since I've been in Tokyo, so, it was a great moment when the Japan Arts Council finally gave us the finished cover mock-ups

It wasn't just the dustjacket that looked nice, either

In fact, I almost like the lilac and silver underjacket even better!

Sadly it's not on the shelves in time for my trip to Kita Nohgakudo to see the play Kiyotsune this afternoon...but next time, it might be!