May 2010Archives

No, this house near Kudanshita is not drunk. It's naturally leaning !Martin

 http://www.kanda-suzuran.com/event.htm

By Anna Kunnecke

    On the heels of the hydrangea is the rain.  It is relentless.  Lots of flowers are blooming, sure, and the greens are so green that your eyes start to pulsate a little bit, but none of that matters very much because what flowers the most is the mold.  And the mildew.  And the little pockets of dank nastiness that breed in even the most pristine house.  And just when you are ready to throw yourself on the ground and wish yourself to Kansas--the rain, egads the rain, my nerves are bleeding--it stops.  And then it gets hot.  Hot, oh my lord, so hot and so humid that the people are like steamed asparagus.  We turn bright green, we wilt, we fall over.  You'll have to forgive me for not mentioning the orgy of black-eyed-susans, Echinacea, and everything else going on outside mid-summer because I am spending most of my time pressed to the cool hardwood floor, moaning.  
    But I hear that there are some pretty amazing lilies and lotus that bloom in the summer, if you like hanging around ponds, which unfortunately have more mosquitoes than flowers, so I don't.  And the climbing roses and bouganvilla are just going crazy at this point, they're so full and lush that you start to believe you live in a tropical country (which, depending on how you define things, you sort of do).  And the bamboo shoots up; one little stray sprout can take over your entire house, if you're not careful.  One morning you might wake up and find that you and your whole family are teetering sixteen feet up in the air, propelled by a mighty strand of bamboo.  What's that?  Delirious?  Well of course I'm delirious, in my imagination it's August.  
    But then September comes around, and while it's still hot, it's not quite AS hot.  And this is one of the best seasons to live in my building, because all around us my neighbors have been nurturing their dahlias.  I think that they must feeds them stray cats at night.  There seems to be an underground competition, and I don't know the rules, but suddenly one week all the pots and styrofoam crates in my neighborhood are preening with these unbelievable dahlias.  They look like blow-up dolls, they're so overbalanced that it seems impossible that they are actually standing up, these crazy intricate dinner plates of petals in deep purples and reds, tawny golds and pinks, and regal white.  
    And at the other end of the spectrum, one step above a weed, are the cosmos, those ethereal floaty things, purple and white and every shade of pink in between, and you can buy them at every little shop in rough gathered bunches for a dollar or two.  They never last indoors for more than a day, and they drop yellow pollen all over tarnation, but there is something so homey and sweet and even melancholy about them.  
    They are the sign that it will soon be fall.  And then one day you are walking wearily through your neighborhood thinking that global warming is here now, it's irreversible, and it will never get cool again, and you smell a fragrance.  It's the kinmokusei, these teeny tiny little orange blossoms that are impossible to spot until they fall to the ground, and are called sweet olive, tea olive, or fragrant olive in English.  These diminutive flowers have an immense presence.  Their waxy fragrance smells exactly like the lipsticks that my grandmother used to keep in her dressing table.  Just exactly.  And it's enough to keep you going, because soon there will be lindo in the shops, those vibrant blue bolt upright Japanese gentians, and mists of thistle and those tiny brown pinecones on spiderwebs, which I have yet to learn the name of, and which remain elusive and mysterious.  But not quite yet.

To be continued...  

By Emily O'Connor

I love Tokyo. But if I had to picture myself living anywhere else in Japan, it would definitely be Sapporo. I first went there last year to record c.cedille's album, and almost instantly fell in love.

The first thing that really stuck me as impressive were all the trees. The studio we record at is located a bit outside of Sapporo literally in the middle of a forest, and it reminded me so much of New York's greenery that it was almost shocking. The air was the same, the frigid weather even in August was the same... I was highly impressed. At first we (Serey and I) were locked up in the studio so we didn't get to see downtown Sapporo, but the day when we finally went downtown to do a gig we were both blown away. The streets had names and were easily labeled, the land was separated in traditional city blocks, and everything was just easy to decipher. When I first moved to Tokyo there were times when I got so lost that I couldn't even find my way home. After spending two days in Sapporo though, I pretty much had the area around Sapporo Station figured out.

Tokyo is great in that it has literally everything. Too much of everything, maybe. I think there's a subtle line between convenience and over-abundance, and Tokyo probably has just a few thousand more vending machines than what are actually necessary, more fast-food joints than possibly necessary and way too many high-end shopping facilities. When everything is so conveniently at-hand it tends to lose it's charm, I think. Part of me thinks that department stores and electronic stores open up just to fill up space in Tokyo. There is no way by any means that Ikebukuro needs five electronic mega-stores within a three mile radius. Especially with how popular online shopping is nowadays, I cannot even fathom how all of these stores stay open. That's why I like Sapporo-- there are just enough nice shopping centers and just enough electronic stores, for example, to keep things interesting and uncomplicated. Anything you're searching for is available somewhere, but unlike Tokyo it isn't available everywhere. In a way it gives people more individuality.

I guess one of the biggest differences between Tokyo and Sapporo is the fact that things in Sapporo just feel newer, mostly because they are. While many buildings in Tokyo have been around for ages, buildings in Sapporo are relatively newer because Sapporo is a more recently developed place. A lot of European-like architecture is also jumbled in, which is another aesthetically pleasing part about Sapporo. Sure, Tokyo has many absolutely beautiful state-of-the-art buildings, however mixed in with those buildings are often tattered buildings that have been around for forever. You could argue and say that old tattered buildings have charm-- and they do. I just prefer the fresher feeling that Sapporo has. It feels like a downtown area that you would see somewhere in North America as opposed to how Tokyo feels like... Tokyo. Amazing in it's own way, but not for everyone.

I'm not sure if I would really like living in Sapporo or not, since I've never been there for more than a week at a time. But from what I can tell it seems like a pretty great place, besides the fact that the winters are extremely cold and driving would be almost a necessity to live there. Although they have a metro system in Sapporo, from what I can tell it's really difficult to get by living there without owning a car. Anyway, if you're ever going to visit Japan, or just want to get out of wherever it is in Japan you live, then check out Sapporo. I suggest going there when it's not below freezing, unless you want to check out the skiing.

By Anna Kunnecke

    Once a good hard rain finally washes away the last of the sakura and the stink of hanami booze clears from the trains, the peonies appear.  The neighborhood bushes get sticky and covered in ants, while the flower shop buckets are full of ridiculously tiny hard knobs on top of leafy stems.  The peonies look less like flowers than like lollipops that've been licked almost all the way down.  And not very good lollipops, either; they're an unappealing greenish brown.  But good heavens.  The tight orbs open up into luscious petaled pillows of color.  The peonies by my building are a deep magenta, and over the course of several days the flowers will fade to a pale pink.  But my absolute favorite are the white ones with the tiny little splotch of crimson in the middle. 
    This is all usually happening around Golden Week, when the whole world shuts down and you want to stay off the highways if at all possible.  Naturally no one in my family has the sense to do this; we usually trip off gaily on a trip, which means that we spend hours and hours stuck in traffic.  Luckily, there is a lot to see from Japanese highways.  On our recent trip north, we saw farmers crouching in wet paddies planting this year's rice crop, and every field and meadow was running wild with the pale yellow of nanohana, rape seed, part of the lowly mustard family. 
    Back in Tokyo, the wooden arbors that stand ugly and naked in the corner park are dripping, absolutely dripping, with pale purple fuji, a wisteria variant.  The fragrance is enough to make you drunk, much like the beautiful empty cans of chuhai (lethal wine coolers) that also adorn the park.
    The one floral treat missing from my immediate vicinity is banks of iris.  They're famous in Japan, the haughty fashion models of the flower kingdom, and there are specific dates at specific gardens when you have to buy tickets in advance and stand in line and peer over your neighbors' shoulders just to catch a glimpse.  Being inherently lazy, I haven't actually made it to one of these iris extravaganzas.  But I have seen the impressive scenes on some very pedigreed calendars, and I'm sure they are worth the wait and the crowds and the aching feet.  But until I get more motivated and organized, I'll just admire the one spindly stalk rearing up out of the Styrofoam box in front of my local pharmacy.  It is a deep royal purple and has more flounces and attitude than any runway waif.
    Besides, I have more urgent matters at hand: the hydrangea.  The stippled cat paws of pale green are starting to flash little teasing hints of blue or pink or purple, and then, suddenly, out of nowhere, they are just everywhere.  Masses and masses of them, the heavy heads drooping by evening, full blooms bigger than a baby's head.  The day I went into labor with my daughter, I went out and bought a blue hydrangea, one of those where the blue is so blue that it makes your teeth ache, and so now I am even more attached to them than I was before, which is to say that we should be announcing our engagement any day now.  In addition to having a lot of personality, the hydrangea have a trump card: they are so robust, so determined, that they can withstand the rain.  Because folks, the rain?  It is coming. 

To be continued...

By Martin Faynot