a little guide to japan

The maker of okonomiyaki, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

First it was Jack, then Andrew Tam, and now Mitchell and Ravi. When someone says they are going to Japan I jump up and down excitedly, hoping to give my two cents. Here is the email I sent to them with a bit of editing and some eye candy:

Both times that I have been in Japan for extended periods of time I bought a one week Japanrail pass and planned my trip around it. It gives you unlimited rail use and becomes very worthwhile for large distances using the Shinkansen.

My trip's structure went a bit like this:

1. a few days in tokyo
2. start the one week japanrail pass
3. zoom around japan
4. end up in kansai: kyoto, osaka, nara, which are all easy to get
between and cheap as well
5. buy a return ticket back to tokyo
6. a day or so more in tokyo

Of course, this works for a Kansai-centric structure, which my last two trips have been.

My first trip was very architecture orientated (with Ellen and Jose), while my second trip with Josh was designed around four festivals. Both trips were in winter.

Tokyo

the pretty lights!, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

my flickr on tokyo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcorners/sets/1477563/



You can find my flickr sets on Tokyo here, here and here.

Won't say too much here. Tokyo is tokyo... The insane underground train system (be warned, it closes at 1am), the 24hour stores and bars, the millions of different districts, each with their own flavour.

Shinjuku (photo above): futuristic Tokyo, skyscrapers and run down yakitori stores near the train line, 5 storey toy shops! Nightlife in every direction, small bars tucked away on several floors.

There is also the twin towered government building which I went to when little to see the view. Might be worth a trip, but have never been back.

Ginza: the high design, classy shopping strip, or it once was... now it is:

Harajuku: where all the young shop, and where all of the architects of the world build (hertzog, sejima, ito)

harajuku, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

prada: distance, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

Harajuku is actually a rough region that starts at Harajuku station (near the Meiji shrine) and is sometimes counted as a part of Shibuya. Not only is it one of the main shopping districts, on Sundays the "fruits" (named after the magazine that documented them) come out to play near the Meiji Shrine. Though apparently not what they once used to be, the "fruits" are a bunch of adolescents that have fun dressing up and are happy for you to snap away at them.

japanese starbucks uniform, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

This being said, people having fun in strange costumes is in no way limited to Harajuku, and I think the best dressed people I saw in my trip were actually in Osaka.

buddas, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

Ueno: the fucking amazing national museum (in particular the Horyu-ji treasure hall, above) with the cemetery behind it, a truly haunting place on a misty day as the prayer sticks rattle in the wind and the ravens fly around.

Asakusa: The tourist destination for Tokyo, with its temple, market street and abandoned fair park. Every trip I've done to Japan since a little kid has always involved this temple but it is actually nothing special, just conveniently placed. Great sushi can be found in the side streets, and down the road towards the river is Stark's Poo building.

5 x tuna, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

The fish markets: The most awesome place in Tokyo. Get up super early and see everyone at work. Huge frozen tunas come in by plane and ship and slowly get processed, until you can eat it at one of the numerous excellent little restaurants at the centre.

Shibuya: More shopping and a host of love hotels.. Check them out on google maps, and go walking. We found the oddest sex shops and teenagers running around trying to find a cheap bed.

Roppongi: Bars, shopping... It's been too long since I've been here (didn't go the last trip). I think it is meant to be the hipper place to go to drink.

PS There is the Studio Ghibli Museum at Mataka. I felt that, unlike Miyazaki's films, this theme park was more or children than adults and was a little disappoint.

To be continued....

must consume... sushi!

reflecting on life..., originally uploaded by dead zebra, inc.

You can tell procrastination is in full swing when I'm shopping for things online that I absolutely don't need, but want ever so much anyway (and trying to work out how I can fit it into the weekly budget).

This delicious piece of cuteness is the red O-No! Sushi! by Andrew Bell, with some really great photos here. I actually found O-No! a little while back and had all but forgotten about it until Nico started mentioning something about Finding Nemo sushi on Facebook.

Poor old O-No! Is being cut up and served with soy sauce, and he is delicious! This designer toy obviously comes from someone with a great sense of humour, who really stuck to the concept, from the great expression on the toy's face (I am worried, but still staying calm) to its packaging.

toy_onosushi-red1, originally uploaded by dead zebra, inc.

sickeningly sweet

sickeningly sweet, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

So, every year there is the visit to the St Louis Abbey. And every year, the daffodils spread just a bit further, their yellow claws grabbing the surrounding hills. Four years ago there was one hill and one valley which made you go "wow, that's a lot of flowers". Now there are three, or four, or... actually, no one knows where it ends anymore. Soon, daffodils will appear on highways, in swamps, in the cat's water bowl, in your shoes laid out at night as you sleep. At first it will seem cute, but then you realise they are everywhere, that their invasion is complete and you never saw it happening. That is when you will cry.

room with a view

This is a bit of an unusual post, but then this is quite an unusual building. I have been subscribed to archidose for as long as I remember and sometimes their weekly building is something truly unexpected, like this hotel in a village close to Naples. The photos of the project include an animated gif that shows the bed in action... great stuff.

bye bye book

Item lost: A book.
Where: Eurostar, London to Paris.

Paris lost property: Phone the hotline. Auto response asking to send a written letter to such and such address and that it can take 3 weeks. Go to the station. The lost property office gives me a (secret) number to call. Number called: they don't have it. Maybe London does?

London lost property: Sent an email, got a reply within 10 minutes.

(sadly they don't have it, but that is besides the point).

Paris: great croissants, but horribly insane.

food, coffee and other things

dourdan04, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

Sorry Zen, but I am going to have to bring you in for this one. Yesterday, Zen told me about a café in London that made the best coffee "in Europe" (and hence, perhaps the world?) and I realised my tastes were way too fickle to be able to say where I had had my best coffee.

When I was working in Paris I could often have three espressos in a day, all from the same cafe downstairs. On arrival at work, at around 11am, and after lunch. The 11am coffee was the best tasting, without any competition. It was the coffee that I didn't NEED, the coffee that was nearly always in the sun, the coffee that was a real pause.

I find coffee is fragile.. tell someone that a café is the best in the world and it becomes harder to like the coffee. Expectations become too high, and you start over analysing: is this coffee really all that great?

In a recent trip to Rome and Naples all of the small cafes we found suprised us with a consistently good, rich, short coffee. So we go to the cafe next to the pantheon that is meant to have the best coffee in Rome, fight a million tourists to get bench space and well... I couldn't work out what was so special about it.

Two days ago I stumbled upon a small café near the British museum that was horribly cute and served quite good coffee. The day after, I meet Kate in the same area. After an initial bad coffee in a cafe directly next to the museum (if excellent coffee is sometimes hard to distinguish, horrible coffee is universal), I suggest we have a second coffee at the same cute place. Now, on my second visit, realising I had suggested this place to someone else, I found myself more critical of the coffee and well, it no longer cut it.

The real transcendal coffees are great coffees that are unexpected. My best coffee memories: Arrival in paris after 3 weeks in the usa, arrival in barcelona after two weeks in germany, a midnight coffee in a town near florence, that place in naples that we thought was touristy and crap but ended up having such a rich blend....

The same goes for food, to some extent.

Where have I eaten the most amazing meals? My aunts place in Dourdan and my cousins place in Normandy. Not only are they good cooks who seek out excellent ingredients, there is a certain ritual involved. Away from the stress of Paris, you wake up and the food is already slowly cooking. The morning is full of smells and anticipation. A ray of sunlight comes out and everyone quickly moves the table outside. An aperitif, and now you can no longer stand it. It smells so good and you are so hungry! And the food tastes twice as good for it.

My favourite restaurants in Paris when I arrived no longer excite me. I have taken their quality of food as a norm and now only taste it when they have stuffed up a dish. Tastes change, expected quality changes. I do not eat the same things in Paris as Sydney, I will no doubt eat different things in London. Since I have been in London I have already eaten twice in china town and fuck I am loving it.

As I am currently reading "the story of art" which manages to summarise centuries of thought across an entire continent in around 5 pages, I can not help but compare movements in art to food and drink: Food and drink, where even a few hundred kilometres means an entire new cuisine, where the best cheese comes form a certain slope in a certain town at a certain time of year. Where these complexities are overlaid by your own tastes, your own state of mind. Food, the most subtle and complex of arts.

Now, you will have to excuse me. I think I have worked up an appetite.

(PS. As I have already had three Londoners talk to me about this one café since I have been here, lets see if people can guess which one Zen was talking about....)

and then it was the 1Os

they said it would snow (but it didnt), originally uploaded by julienpaul.

If you move often enough, and far enough, you start mistaking time for space. Sydney was this period of my life, Paris was this, London will be this. Then you start comparing the places, and if you compare for too long, you never live anywhere, nor experience anything. Paris is not X times Sydney minus Y times London. Sydney is not Paris, is not London. Should any be put into continual reference of the other, they both become cheap, and you become utterly boring.