Tokyo notes

• At first, I was underwhelmed by Tokyo. There was a lot of neon and not enough grandeur. Because of the ravages inflicted on the capital city by war and earthquakes and the zealous rush to build quickly during the bubble economy, I found the city to be lacking in the visible history, elegance and diversity that makes other modern cities such as London and NYC so full of character. However, the more we explored, the more the city's diverse personality revealed itself to me. Glitzy Ginza, tawdry Roppongi, nerdy Akihabara, hip Naka-Meguru, swish Aoyama, flashy Shinjuku, gaudy Harajuku, trashy Shibuya, grown-up Ebisu... And there are some ultra modern architectural treats in each neighbourhood. The city quickly grew on me.
  
  
• Road signs are difficult to spot. You have to be guided by familiar buildings or landmarks. However, there are vicinity maps on most streets and whether people speak good English or not, everyone will help you if you are lost.
  
  
• Everyone waits at the crossing until the walk sign lights up, even if there is no traffic. We found this a very stress-free way of navigating the city. And despite this being a rich, capital city where a lot of money is made and people are very busy, we found that people walked at a slower pace than in NYC or in London or even in Paris.
  
  
• People are addicted to their mobile phones here - not for chatting but for surfing the net or reading or texting or emailing. On trains, in stores, in elevators, on the subway, meandering down the middle of a busy street, in restaurants, with friends - everywhere, everyone with their noses in their clamshell cellphones.
  
  
• The streets are the cleanest I have ever seen. People will carry their litter rather than throw it to the ground. Where bins exist - usually beside the numerous drinks vending machines on every street corner - they are separated into various types - paper, plastic, cans.
  
  
• We didn't see any Tokyoites snacking on the streets and the vending machines sold only drinks or, more rarely, ice creams. The only people we saw snacking on chocolate and crisps were European or American tourists. Obviously we don't know what goes on in peoples' homes but we were also struck by the smaller portion sizes in restaurants, even in McDonald's.
  
  
• I expected more people smoking. I get more bothered by people smoking on the street in London than in Tokyo and this surprised me. There are even signs embedded in the pavements requesting that people refrain from smoking on the street. In restaurants, the extractors were quite efficient and we were only troubled a few times.
  
  
• People pay a lot of attention to what they are wearing - even on the weekend. Smart or casual, designer-clad or Harajuku-mix n' match, the attire was always clean, tidy and well thought out. Baggy pink ti-shirts, dirty trainers and messy hair were more likely to be seen on tourists than on a native Tokyoite. In fact, the attention to fashion detail and the overall chicness reminded me of the Marais district in Paris.
  
  
• I didn't see a single female commuter in sneakers. Kitten and high heels everywhere, all the time! These girls will suffer in order to look good.
  
  
• Tokyo is the city of neon - lots of it, flashing everywhere, even in the most nondescript of neighbourhoods.
  
  
• The pachinko parlours, video game arcades and slot machine bars were crammed with suited men and women after work - perhaps preparing themselves for their long commute home to the suburbs.
  
  
• Service in restaurants and stores and even on the subway was impeccable and attentive. People saying Hello and Goodbye and Can I Help You and Thank You.
  
  
• Manga and anime are huge here. We descended into Shibuya's vast underground Mandarake store and saw numerous women alone or in pairs with other women browsing the shelves of romantic or sexual "boy love" manga and anime. There were fewer men on the Saturday night we were there, but they were browsing the manga (often quite violent) porn and the glass displays of new and rare manga figurines, comic books, stickers and posters, even original art work.
  
  
• Books we finished on our trip: Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and South of the Border, West of the Sun; Ryu Murakami's 69; and Banana Yoshimoto's Hardboiled / Hard Luck.

Eating in shabu shabu style

It's nearly 4 in the morning, I've been up a couple of hours already, and I'm jetlagged. So I thought, what better way to start a Planethalder post on our trip to Japan than to write about some of the food we ate.

When we first arrived in Tokyo, we were a tad trepidacious about ordering out as it was rare for an English menu to be displayed outside the restaurant itself. These plastic replicas of dishes (first two photos below), from tempura to pizza, helped, and quickly we learned that all you have to do is ask for a menu in English or point.


Bowls of char siu ramen, with pork, fish cake, hardboiled egg, seaweed and spinach, at Shun Kan in Shinjuku / Shrimp tempura with soba noodles at Masudaya in Shinjuku / Grilled eel in Minokichi in Shinjuku / Mixed sushi (mackerel, shrimp, tuna, salmon roe, gizzard shad, gourd strip and cucumber) at Koshi Sushi in Aoyama / Okonimyaki - one with pickled radish, red ginger and spring onions; another with squid, pork and shrimp - at Ushio in Roppongi / Tonkatsu - breaded pork - with miso soup, rice and pickled daikon in Ginza.

Two of my favourite dining experiences took place in glitzy Ginza (think 5th Avenue with less grandeur but more neon), towards the end of our holiday. We had a variety of green tea desserts at a basement establishment whose name now escapes me. The place was filled with female office workers and there were long queues to get in. And at Zakuro, we ate shabu shabu where we submerged thinly sliced pieces of beef into a cauldron of bubbling light stock made from kombu or kelp and then dipped the meat into sesame and Japanese vinegar dipping sauces. Our charming waitress also dipped enokitake mushrooms, cabbage, rice noodles, spring onions, spinach and tofu into the stock and served them to us in small bowls. Throughout the meal, she kept skimming the fat off the water's surface, and at the end served us bowls of the stock itself.

We didn't only eat Japanese food of course. We had pizzas and cheese toasties and pasta and salads too. We were staying in the luxurious Park Hyatt Tokyo (of Lost In Translation fame) so we couldn't pass up the chance to dine on exquisite Tochigi beef steaks with sauteed vegetables and pureed potatoes there. And in Kyoto, the refined kaiseki menu we ate in our traditional ryokan became all too much for me and I gave into a craving for McDonald's - but that's for another post.

Eastward bound

We're off to Tokyo and Kyoto - see you in 2 weeks with loads of photos and descriptions!

Whirlwind

It's been a whirlwind at work leaving me little energy afterwards to blog about my weekend. My highlights since Friday... On Friday we popped into the Crafting Beauty In Modern Japan exhibition at the British Museum, which showcased some truly beautiful and intricate ceramics, textiles, lacquer work, metal work, bamboo and glass work. Afterwards, we ate at the blink-and-you'll-miss-it Kikuchi on Hanway Street. One of my favourite Japanese restaurants, along with Umu, Roka and Matsuri - the delicate, fresh food belies the dowdy exterior and the place is packed with Japanese people. We ate turbot rolled in plum sauce, red miso soup, tempura crab, fatty tuna, sashimi selection, deep fried tofu and ginger, scallops with ginger and citron miso, green tea ice cream and red bean ice cream. All washed down with buckwheat shochu, barley shochu and green tea.

On Saturday, we popped into JP Books on Haymarket and bought some pretty Japanese print notebooks (below). Saw the interesting Painting In England 1957 exhibition at the Redfern Gallery, featuring the muted post-war palette of British abstract expressionists such as Frank Avray Wilson and Denis Bowen. Francis Bacon's Figures In A Landscape (above) was elemental and sexually charged. His painting of two lovers tustling in the grass has not been visible for 50 years and was one of his earliest attempts to paint figures in movement.


We also saw Karen Kilimnik's wonderfully childlike paintings at the Spruth & Magers gallery. Her magical paintings set against striped Regency-style wallpaper and mouldings were like illustrations in old children's books or like the amateur paintings sold by the side of Green Park - the romanticised world of English teas, old London, and bucolic paradise. John Maeda's computer installations at the Riflemaker gallery (above) always mesmerise. But I most enjoyed the post-Independence collection of modern Indian paintings at the Aicon Gallery off Heddon Street. K Laxma Goud's powerful, earthy and vital line drawings, etchings and watercolours (below) particularly impressed and we had a great conversation with the Director about modern Indian art. This is a gallery I'm going to keep a keen eye on.


In the evening we witnessed the amazing vocal feats of charismatic Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour, who I last saw way back in 2004, at The O2 - or "The O Queue" as my husband impatiently calls the old Millennium Dome for the intolerable people congestion and long queues inside the vast venue. As I wrote back in 2004, "N'Dour has an amazing 4-5 octave range and his voice soars and swoops with such ease, it transfixes its listener."

Sunday was spent walking off huge breakfast bacon sandwiches M is fond of making on weekends now - trekking 4 hours up and down the hills of Crouch End and Highgate Village looking at roads we'd like to buy on. Eventually we collapsed on Hampstead Heath to nap and chat and read and people watch. I love this area - we both have roots in the Hampstead area and we were married there earlier this year. I aspire to retire to a lovely old detached house off the Heath one day. A girl can dream...

Then we went into Pimlico to meet a friend who's stopping over from India and Tanzania. We chatted about development work, making or adopting babies, mutual friends, falling for married men (!) over some rather bland and overly salty Indian food at Nutmeg. Drinking Staropramens in The Warwick was so pleasant now there is a no smoking ban. It makes such a difference. Now they just need to ban sports TV. I was going to say, "Even if it's only mellow cricket" but M informed me it was actually golf. Oh well...

Also this week: bought a pretty polka dot silk dress from DKNY on Bond Street, spent a night drinking with colleagues and clients in Soho, booked our flights and hotels to Tokyo and Kyoto at the Japan Centre Travel Agents, and taken too many taxis.