Sunday, February 26, 2006

shingo katori


After my love for Takuya faded, I turned my sites to Shingo (the more versatile Johnny's boy and less up himself member of the boy band SMAP)
He is a monkey
a power ranger

and a mama


he is even on the side of a JAL Boeing 777

frankie from kel




"Hello." Peering around the corner into the apartment. "Hello?"
"Hey Kel it's Deanne"
"Oh where are you"

"Standing in your genkan, where are you?"

"Ah ha ha, didn't I lock the front door?? I thought I did, oh well anyway we are just at the supermarket, make yourself at home, we will be home in about 5 minutes"

"Ok I'll just be here with the robbers"
I was instantly at home when I discovered a copy of a recently released, obviously Aussie mag on Kel's dinning table.
Frankie describe themselves as 'wordly, funny, easily digested and inspirational.' Can't say that I disagree with that at all. It is far from the stereotypical trash, that is often no more than an act of environmental devastation. Frankie has it going on in so many ways. Issue #9 has no hint of waif dorky models, the fashion in this edition worn by plastic dolls, the kind that you might find in the top of a cake or in one of those gorgeous toilet roll covers that only a nanna can knit.
triple j had this to say about frankie


thanks kel!
ps we can subscribe...the asia/pac 1 year subscription is $81.65 AU (chotto ouch - but probably worth it for a good aussie read)

threadbared


thanks to frankie, i found this - their blog o the day
threadbared.com
this is something that i see anna really sinking her needle into

Friday, February 24, 2006

muji + infill

houses with the help of muji, what a perfect idea. if only all tokyo apartments were like this. i mean...ours is, i just feel sorry for so many others

Thursday, February 23, 2006

quack quack

zume: "I like your lips"

me: "Really?"

zume: "Yer you have small duck lips"

me: "Small duck lips?"

zume: "Yeah"

me: "Get away from me!"

big in japan

Love these hoodies from NoiseBot.comNot a fan of the logo or witty ditty on the front of clothes usually...but these look rad
THIS IS MY FAV (I wonder what ever happened to Bob Saget? Once the Olsen twins Dad, Danny Tanner...)
update: I found out what happened to Bob Saget - he became a god - http://www.bobsagetisgod.com/
see there is even a domain name to prove it!

Sunday, February 19, 2006

harajuku lovers


check out gwen and her hybrid..i mean harajuku girls at harajuku lovers

some sites and sounds of the city included
for a laugh go to the 'harajuku girls' link

A view from the Chuo Line - Donald Richie




"Are you going to read books with your friends tonight?" Zume asked, probably lounging in his car. "No, I am not going to read the book, the author is." And then a long pause, quite obviously Zume was not picturing the event. "I'm going to a book reading. You know how Carrie on Sex and the City goes and reads her books in front of people? Well that's kind of what tonight will be like...I think." Now tuning in, "Oh wow that's really cool. Make sure you wear a jacket"

To be honest I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I had missed Donald Richie's previous reading at Ben's cafe in Takadonobaba so I was delighted when a friend invited me to another of Sir Donald's (I am quite sure he has not been knighted but I like the sound of it) reading at the cosy Sun and Moon Yoga Studio in Meguro.

The reading was far greater than I had imagined. Donald Richie, author of Ozu, The Inland Sea, Tokyo Nights and countless other books from over 50 years of writing in and on Japan, gave much more that an animated reading from his latest 'A View from the Chuo Line'. The 81 year old, with the vigor of someone decades his junior, spoke of life as an outsider in Japan and his undying attention to all things. I scrawled these quotes in the back of his book moments before he scrawled his signature in the front.

"A life properly lived is the ability to pay attention to everything"
"People all over the world think differently, but they all feel the same" (Offered when asked how he considers his audience.

yahoo i love george



For the longest time I have been meaning to boycott yahoo. There is no oveewhelming reason to do so, except for the fact that everytime I type in yahoo.com, the menu page comes up and I am confronted with some ridiculous celeb goss. I will admit that sometimes I am sucked in, but generally speaking I don't give a fuck about what Jen, Brad, Carmen, Paris or any of those crazy nobody/ somebodys are doing, marrying or abusing. So for that I have been wanting to give Yahoo the flick.
But today I found this...

"The adventures of Curious George, the inquisitive little guy with an insatiable taste for adventure. George's spunky and fun-loving nature endears him to new friends, but also lands him in a series of (mis-)adventures. Featuring the voice talents of Eugene Levy, Drew Barrymore, and Will Ferrell as the Man in the Yellow Hat."

Curious George by H. A. Rey (Hans Augusto and his wife Margret - the books were published in a time when a man's name on the cover was more accepted than a woman's) , is in my opinion, one of the coolest and most timeless children's series. I particularly love the book where George ends up in hospital and gets stuck into the ether, the nurses fix him up with a good cold shower. (Curious George goes to hospital was actually created at the request of Boston Children's Hospital, who wanted a book to prepare children for a hospital stay. {and the joys of accidental drug abuse??} ) I think the thing I love most about the series is that it is not always 'PC' but who cares when you get to ride the streets on top of a double decker bus with a naughty monkey?!

Curious George, first published way back in 1941, had finally been picked up by universal.
With an original Jack Johnson soundtrack and voices by Will Ferrell and Drew Barrymore.



ninja training camp

geez i had no idea that the ninja that served us the other night at the ninja restaurant, had to go through all of this training...

ps the soundtrack on this is friggin shockin' - turn your sound down

Saturday, February 18, 2006

everything old is new (and totally screwed up) again

Realising that Tokyo happening may be lost forever, I backed up and dragged everything to Blogger in the most archaic of ways.
While it seems now that I have achives dating back to Jan 2005, a whole year of posting needs to be tweaked. Pictures are too big, words all over the shop. As if I didn't spend enough of my life perched infront of this little white box...seems I have alot of blog cleaning to do!

Friday, February 17, 2006

dog goods


Takeshita Dori
Harajuku


Thursday, February 16, 2006

kitty carbs


Hello Kitty can be such a pea head
Hello Kitty pasta from the Lawson 100 store

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

ninja toilet


oh...there was even a shishi odishi in the bathroom - perhaps to scare of any deer that may wander into the ladies toilets of the restaurant.

tokyo plastic - little fella


yer yer I know, slow as a wet week I am.
Seems tokyo plastic had been hard at work and it has taken me a good coupla weeks to discover their new lil buddy - The Little Fella
Go check him out for yourself

ninja restaurant tokyo

Yes, we did spend part of our Valentine's evening in a game centre in Shibuya, pouring our 100yen coins into the purikura machines

But we kicked off the evening in the company of Ninja.
At the Ninja restaurant in Akasaka Mitsuke.
This was a surprise I had been planning for a long time.
So I was super excited when we reached the Ninja lair.


Deciphering the menu scroll presented to us by a 'real' ninja, we decided upon two different courses.
Could not resist the urge to take photos of all the mouth watering morsels served to us by the ninja. At one point 'our' ninja set one of my dishes on fire and presented zume with a smoking box, containing an egg. Gently cracking the egg onto a bed of multicoloured seaweed, a scrumptious looking mixed salad appeared.
Ninja really are MAGIC!

Monday, February 13, 2006

street scrawl - ekys


from there to here
from here to there
the ekys tag is everywhere

one of these days i am going to prove that the ekys crew gets around...this simple four letter black tag is scrawled all over tokyo, from my home in okubo to my work place in hiroo. i spotted the above one just outside of shinjuku station. i found another in ebisu, ekys obviously frequent nakameguro. these guys have been everywhere. for the longest time i have wanted to know the crew behind the scrawl. if anyone knows who does this tag...e me!

Sunday, February 12, 2006

secret ninja

ladies lunch


avoiding the omotesando hills opening crowd, we headed for the highly rated eats and meets cay in the basement of the spiral building.

while the service did not live up to its reputation - the 'view' and surroundings well made up for that
(we liked our waiter alot - infact all the boys working here were very 'friendly' we were particularly amuzed by their funky styles. one of our new friends had a blonde mowhawk and gold boots, while another simply had no shoes at all)

eats and meets had us wanting more, so it was off to fujimamas for cake and cocktails

it must have been all the cake because somehow we ended up in a neptunian karaoke box

where true colours always come out

this explains my sore back

all this well before last train
tis good to start early
thanks ladies

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

you missed


Leaving Anna outside with her 'giant stroller' and four tired shoppers asleep on the bench seat, I rounded the corner into the ladies toilets to be confronted by a line of three other full bladdered shoppers.
It is usually at this time that I begin to imagine the state of the toilets, forseeing such things as toilet technology, seat warmth (many toilets in Japanese department stores have temperature controlled seats) and overall cleanliness.
Despite the introduction and spread of western-style toilets soon after WW II , many Japanese are still not convinced that relaxing while relieving oneself is an advantage. Thus Japanese style toilets still lurk in the most unlikely of places, just to keep us toiletphobes on our toes.
The bathroom had two western style and three Japanese style. This is what I landed.


Sunday, February 05, 2006

Get some fuku in your uchi! demons out, happiness in!


Every thing was prepared for our Setsubun celebration...


full bottles of polish vodka and french liqueur to warm the cockles...


and all the ingredients to make an edamame pesto.


Oni seemed to enjoy the first few bites of his special beany dinner...


but it must have been all that bean throwing and bringing in of good luck that sent the oni away and brought back zume who looked at me sadly and muttered 'do mind if i have some rice?'


not sure if it was the bean throwing ceremony (oni wa soto, fuku was uchi - demons out, happiness/luck in) , the bouquet complete with dead fish head (lots of old japanese ladies were buying them at the supermarket so i figured it was the done thing - i didn't want to be the only house in the neighbourhood without a fish head and golden testicles on their door) or the 96% polish vodka that left us in high spirits.

Happy Setsubun
May you all have lots of fuku in your uchi!!