Category Archives: cafes

A Neighborhood of Unentered Doors

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spoonhead

After a discussion about favorite places in Tokyo, one of my students told me about her favorite neighborhood, Nishi Ogikubo. The student, Kyoko, is a super sweet, hardworking, single mother. She has a great funky style. Like once she had a handbag made of Heineken beer cans that was surprisingly chic.

When she learned that I had never been to Nishi Ogikubo, or even heard of it, she excitedly told me of all the cool shops there, and charming cafes. And on the last day of class she gave me this hand-drawn map, with recommended places to visit. That was about 5 months ago and I’ve been itching to go there since.

ogikubo

Yesterday I had a free morning and hopped on the Chuo Line to pay a visit. At first glance it seemed like any other newly renovated local station area: chain restaurants, discount bag stores, pachinko parlors. The map appeared to be separated into 3 main areas. I went to the smallest one first where there was a natural food store, an organic restaurant, and a new age bookstore. Unfortunately, only the food store was open.

So next I went along Fushimi St. By then it was 11am but most of the stores were closed. I noticed that many of the stores were closed on Wednesdays. This is similar to many restaurants in the U.S. that are closed on Mondays. Although in Japan, a neighborhood can decide that day off to be Tuesday, Wednesday, or even Thursday.

Nevertheless, along the side streets there were numerous cafes, most closed. But I got lots of great shots of interesting doors. Nishi Ogikubo definitely has the best collection of intriguing cafes in Tokyo.

Mr. Shallows

Among the few cafes that were open I ventured into Shallow’s Café, which is just out of Kyoko’s map (go to the end of Fushimi St. and turn right). It had been open only two weeks. What drew me in were the displays of 60’s and 70’s rock album covers in the window.

The café concept is to listen to an album from the owner’s collection and drink coffee or eat lunch. I requested something by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. And he pulled out a Stephen Stills solo album that I’d never heard. Awesome! I enjoyed the clean, wood look of the interior, littered with bits of Americana. The owner, who spoke very good English, explained that he wanted to share his collection of music. When I asked him about the name of the café, he explained that his Japanese surname translates to “the shallows of a body of water”.

Also in the neighborhood were many antique shops. North of the station there was a cute street with a great bookstore with lots of children’s books, and folk crafts stores. I found a lot of import goods and furniture that were a fraction of the price in more trendy neighborhoods. I’m definitely going back. But not on a Wednesday. Although, I like the mystery of a neighborhood filled with colorful unentered doors.

Click on any of the pictures to see more from the neighborhood.

Petals and Other Fleeting Moments

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meguro river in bloom 1

Catch it quick because it’s only going to last another week. One strong wind or a heavy rain can end it in an afternoon.

meguro river in bloom at night

Once a year Japan consummates its obsession over cherry blossoms. There have been months of cherry blossom blooming forecasts and updates on the news. People make itineraries to squeeze in as much cherry blossom viewing as possible. College kids and seniors arrive early in the morning at parks to stake out and defend a small picnic area under the blooms. Some of the larger popular parks are crammed with a patchwork of plastic blue tarps filled with revelers drinking beer and eating festival food. The paths are lined with food stalls and if you’re lucky, there may be some dancing and entertainment.

meguro river in bloom at night

It’s a fantastic time. Which is the reason T and I decided to spend our Spring vacation in and around Tokyo this year, instead of traipsing around some tropical locale as usual.

A good tour would balance the famous sites with lesser known places. Ueno Park probably has Tokyo’s best mass display. For the finest night time viewing, walk around the Imperial Palace. It has trees illuminated for a dramatic viewing. Yoyogi Park has the biggest picnic party atmosphere. For more space, you can visit the stately and well-kept Shinjukukyoen. But my favorite spot is the Meguro River in Nakameguro, accessible on the Hibiya and Toyoko lines.

open hedgehogs

Like most rivers in large cities, the Meguro River is nothing more than a concrete-lined stream, but it’s lined with cherry trees with branches that droop down towards the water. The surface of the stream is lightly salted with pink delicate petals. The lanterns illuminate the petals on the trees at night for a romantic cozy ambiance.

Nakameguro is an artsy neighborhood peopled with bohemian designers and artists. The streets along the Meguro River are crammed with inviting cafes, chic restaurants, over-priced salons, and funky boutiques. It has a nice used furniture store full of designer cast-offs and a cool bookstore with lots of odd English books. And whenever I visit I make a point of getting a latte at the Café Madeleine. We happen to run into some friends there.

cafe madeleine

Run out of a the back of a Citroen, the coffees are hand crafted by the humble barista (who has never been to France) in the cramped back seat. I recommend the Madeleine latte, which has an intriguing blend of spices. It takes about 7 minutes to make one. And it comes with a chocolate.

Then continue strolling along the river, contemplating how fleeting and delicate life is.

red bridge and lanterns

Baqet

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the baker

Fresh baked bread right out of the oven. You can have as much as you like. All 21 varieties. Baqet is a restaurant in the Meguro Station building. Lunch is about 700 to 1200 yen, and if you pay a little more it includes all-you-can-eat-bread from the bread bar, and all-you-can-drink beverages at the drink bar.

The main dishes, which change daily, are Italian fare, mostly drizzled in olive oil, whatever dish you choose. But it’s perfect for sopping up with steaming buns right out of the oven.

the bread bar

Once a batch of bread is baked, the baker comes out, rings a bell, announces which bread is available, and a small herd of people jump up from their tables and load up on the tiny plates that are provided. On a lazy Sunday, I nibbled on 13 rolls. They are truly tasty. My favorites are the buttery croissants, the green tea mugwort rolls, and the milk pastries. The drink bar is also quite good. I single-handedly emptied their weekly grape juice supply.

It’s not a place to relax with a book unless you go after the lunch rush, after 2pm perhaps. There’s usually a long line of people around noon. But I’ve seen clueless people plunk down with a newspaper and hold up a table while sipping on coffee. It’s just a mixed bag in general. There was a hyper little kid that coughed on the bread, an elderly couple who kept creepily staring at me, and one incredibly lazy young woman who kept calling the baker to come to her table to deliver the bread.

In short, T and I rolled our eyes and giggled a lot. I closed my eyes and breathed in the delicious bread and imagined myself in a Fellini bakery.

Museums Around the Palace

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late for the ball

Continuing my museums of Tokyo tour, I decided to venture near the Imperial Palace, at the very center of Tokyo. I visited the Science Museum and MOMAT (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo), and made a short detour into the Imperial Palace Gardens.

Trotting Around the Palace Gardens

I ventured into the Palace Gardens with a little apprehension. It’s intimidating to approach it. There’s the busy road, the moat, the stone bridge, the imposing wall, the guards, barriers, and no signs of welcome, and no sign of people entering or exiting.

moatwater

Yet I decided to walk up to the gate house, and when no one stopped me I walked past the guards and finally saw a sign that said I was allowed to enter. There was no entrance fee but I was required to carry a thick plastic guest pass that I had to return upon exiting.

Inside were a scattering of foreigners wandering about, an opera house that a former emperor had built for his empress, vast lawns, more imposing stone walls, and gardens. But most surprising were the horse-drawn carriages and cavalry trotting around in Meiji Era uniforms. I think they were exercising the horses. There was a pick-up truck that tailed them in case the horses left behind their business. I’m assuming the carriages were for the royal family if they want to go from one palace to the next, or maybe from their tennis courts to the imperial outhouse.

A History of Bicycles

Before being transported in time to the Meiji Era, I stopped by the Science Museum and was transported to other time periods.

equine bicycle

There were a million little kids running around but they seemed to be concentrated in just a few of the galleries. The most popular were the robot exhibit and the mechanics exhibit. The exhibits were wildly uneven, ranging from high tech displays sponsored by big name corporations to shabby halls of interactive science experiments that looked like high school science fairs. What’s worse is that these exhibits were difficult to understand. Sure my Japanese is far from literate, but I heard lots of kids muttering, “nani kore?” “What is this?”

The highlight of the museum was the Plaza of Bicycles. It was a fantastic collection of bicycles from its early forms as wooden riding toys to the sleek whisps of space-age metal and rubber of today. I loved this exhibit. Click on the picture above for more bikes.

Self/Other

Just down the street from the Science Museum is the The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, or MOMAT. I didn’t get to check out the permanent exhibit. I only had time to look at the Self/Other special exhibit. This was a brilliantly themed collection, drawing in mostly Japanese artists and some Korean artists as well, to explore how the self is expressed in relation to the other. The museum passed out a collection of essays in English about each of the eight subthemes. Every museum should do this. It starts out slow, with nominally interesting pieces, but ends with some inspired videos. There are three highlights.

cont_546_4.jpgMultiple Personalities
The first is a photomontage by Tomoko Sawada called “ID400”. It consists of three panels of ID photos taken not in a studio but in the photo ID booth at her local train station. The public bathroom was her changing room.

For each of the 400 different IDs she made costume, hair and make-up changes, as well as tweaks in her facial expressions, resulting in identities ranging from vacuous teenager to prim office worker to sullen barfly.

In a medium (a photo booth) meant to capture an official identity, Sawada questions what that identity is, and shows how arbitrarily it can be displayed.

Claymation and Voyeurism
takamine_godblessamerica.jpg“God Bless America” is a time-lapse video filming the artist, Takamine Tadasu, and his assistant, while they eat, watch TV, sleep and copulate. In the center of their red living room is a huge mound of clay that they pound and carve into various creatures and characters, making it sing an old recording of “God Bless America” over and over again. I’m not sure what the political implications of this is, other than that the U.S. is a large presence in the every day life of a couple. Regardless of whatever message Tadasu was trying to convey, it was highly entertaining, mixing claymation and voyeurism to elicit a lot of laughter from the viewers around me.

Global Gazes
Kimsooja’s “Needle Woman” is an installation of four videos, one on each wall of a black room. She faces away from the camera while people walk past her on busy streets in four cities around the world: Cairo, Mexico City, Lagos, and London.cont_554_1.jpg

We never get to see the artist’s face. We only get to observe the gaze of the “other” reacting to her. The passers-by of each city had different reactions. On the one extreme were Londoners, who simply ignored her. They briskly walked past without a glance. In Mexico City, the pace was slower and the pedestrians similarly ignored her, but their gaze was downward or away, as if they were trying to not be involved in whatever this woman was doing. In Cairo, she attracted the attention of mostly young men who looked at her directly, talking or laughing, at her or amongst themselves, as they walked by. They were the most aggressive of the four city dwellers. In Lagos, the people also interacted with her but not aggressively. There was a large group of open, smiling children gathered in front of her. Women looked on in curiosity and sometimes stopped to observe her, probably with the same expression that Kimsooja gazed back at them.

I was fascinated to see how different cities gazed upon and interacted with someone doing nothing at all. She was, in fact, just standing and looking at them, making herself the faceless other.

H2
H2 Cafe We can’t close this museum review without a comment on the café. MOMAT’s café, H2, is a posh white affair with a wall of glass facing the Imperial Palace wall and moat. It looked like one of those places where shady art dealers meet. Snobby waiters, 500yen coffee, water served from green bottles, pretentious art photographs suspended on wire hovering above glass bowls of tropical fruit. In short, I loved it. Stop in and make sure not to tip the waiter.

Photo credits. All photos not credited to an artist in the text are by Wind.

Les Hydropathes

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In the late 1870′s, Les Hydropathes was a literary club in Paris where the symbolism movement fomented. For the less historic modern version , you can go to Shibuya and visit the stylish brasserie of the same name. Les Hydropathes is in the basement of the Parco department store. After browsing in the nearby Logos, which has a great collection of photography books, you can relax in the chic, moody, but casual atmosphere of the cafe.

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