Tried to write this earlier in the week, but Blogspot and I had unresolved issues about uploading pictures, so I battled with it for a bit and then totally gave up. Still haven't quite worked out how to do this, so will have to do the blog separately and the pictures to accompany it will follow in due course.
So – it's Friday morning here in Tokyo – 7.02 am to be precise. I've just got back from the fish market and, since nothing and no-one else is alive at this time, climbed back into bed with the laptop. In the last seven days, I have packed all of my possessions in Amsterdam, left and gone to Brussels, had a great 18 hours there, gone to London to see my parents and, briefly, my mate Dan and arrived in Tokyo. I have now been here for three days, slowly getting over the jet lag and exploring the city.
Brussels was fun – I have always had unremittingly bleak reviews of it, with descriptions that placed it somewhere between a pointless waste of bricks and mortar and purgatory: not exciting enough to be really bad (Milton Keynes it ain't), but certainly a long way away from “good”. Overall, I must say that I disagree – it is certainly a lovely place to spend a day or two. I went to a rather fun place called (unpromisingly) “Belga Queen” for dinner on Friday night – a great oyster bar with an unfussy but well-matched wine list (Alsatian Pinot Gris is where it was at that night) and huge platters of all sorts of marine wildlife that looked like something faintly Boschian. Met up with a friend for a drink subsequently but, all in all, a comparatively early night. The next (bitterly cold) morning was spent walking around town admiring the sights and passing the time in opulent chocolate shops. All very civillised – and just in time for the Eurostar to London.
Continuing the gastronomic theme, has a great night at the Joel Robuchon place next to the Ivy, which I still hadn't been to. Most of the meal was good, except the big hunk of milk-fed veal that I had as my main, which was absolutely superb and entirely worth going there (and possibly to London, depending on where you're coming from) for.
Sunday was mostly packing stuff (thanks Dan) and then Monday was the flight to Tokyo. Now, I know that this is hardly news, but I am always amazed by how awkward and difficult BAA try to make your life whenever you try to use one of their grey, decrepit airports: it is really an art, of sorts. Sullen men and women in fading uniforms the colour of boredom usher you through various hoops, each of which tries to repeat on the previous one as much as possible and each of which is – of course – absolutely paramount to world and state security (this isn't the place to discuss – yet again – the continued replacement of “living” with “security” that has been the hallmark of 21st century government policy, but, suffice it to say, I am still not happy about it). The shops, carpets and walls look more and more like JFK at the low-point of its existence in the 90s.
ANYway – once that was all out of the way, I was safely cantilevered into my seat on Virgin – the flight was fine, in that I managed to sleep through a lot of it. A side-note to Virgin though – including bento boxes as one of the menu choices: good. Making the contents inedible: bad.
The first thing that I found interesting about Tokyo was the petrol/ liquid carrying trucks on the motorway – I wish I had a picture: they are very VERY shiny silver metal, with no branding. They are a thing of beauty – spotlessly clean quicksilver concave cylinders, reflecting a chunky, happy reality back at the passers by. Joyful.
I am staying with my friend Ed in Tokyo, who lives (though I didn't realise this when he first kindly offered to put me up) in the very centre of things, about 5 minutes stroll from Omote-sando Dori and thus very close to Shibuya and Harajuku, among others. Quite apart from that, his house is a thing of Ando Tadao designed beauty, the sort of effortless tranquil human-centred simplicity that Ando is famous for. Most of the next two days would be spent in trying to find something that would quite match that one building – and while Tokyo managed to do it cumulatively, it is still hard to think of any one thing that won me over quite so simply and persuasively.
Although I had got some sleep on the plane, I landed at what was 10am here and 1am in London; I was thus fine for the first few hours, but turned progressively more vegetative as the day wore on; really, I had to have a little nap and didn't get out and exploring until late afternoon. That evening was spent looking at the beautiful/ bizarre/ awe-inspiring buildings on Omote-sando (few were more than two out of three): the Tod'ses, Louis Vuittons, Diors and Pradas of this world have taken to commissioning ever-more-elaborate boutiques to line that street, and photos of a few of them will appear when I get my act together. I also ended up in Shibuya for a bit, with a bit of uber-kitch Takeshita street thrown in for good measure. Dinner was a little local chicken place, which was absolutely perfect and exactly what was needed.
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