Gyoza, National Art Centre Roppongi + Tempura

We headed to Ginza for lunch at a dumpling shop recommended on the internet's gourmand dining site, Goyozaya Bunbuku, but which turned out to be restricted to lunch sets in the middle of the day instead of the promised variety of dumpling contents (ranging from cheese to seafood), after a brief shopping episode at Layayette, the Parisian department store holding its summer sale just like in Paris.



We next headed to the National Art Centre in Roppongi, the lilting wavy concrete building with contours formed by steel reinforced curtain windows ripping around the front of the building that we had observed from Tokyo City View in the Mori Tower. This was certainly new and beautiful in quite megalithic proportions. It was showing the 'Skin and Bones' exhibition relating parallels between fashion and architecture, a community pottery exhibit and calligraphy. The 'skin + bones' exhibition, organised by MCA, LA, looked at fundamental parallel issues of identity, shelter, creative process, creating form - geometry, constructing volume, techniques of construction - structural skin, construction/deconstruction/reconstruction, folding, suspension, cantilever, wrapping, pleating, printing, weaving, and synthesis (towards a digital age). The calligraphy had to be appreciated for their elegance, style and flow, because needless to say we could not read the calligraphy messages but the aesthetic works were multitudinous in the large newly opened (7 months ago) National Art Centre. The community ceramics society exhibition combined works by established artists and aspiring ones in every conceivable style, dimension and technique. There were various categories such as traditional (tea bowl, useful), sculptural (like this), dolls, contemporary utilitarian, etc. Perhaps Mum was in pottery heaven?


Wavy facades of glass and steel structures encase a torso of concrete. The building appears to flow with organicism despite the materials of its modern construction.

For dinner we went to the Tempura restaurant 'ten-ichi deux' at Nishi-Ginza, "a smaller branch of the famous Ten-Ichi, known for serving some of the best tempura in town where we could have indeed quality tempura in light batter and a la carte tempura pieces of tasty items like lotus root, green pepper, pumpkin, large or enormous shrimp and a variety of salt/spice/sauce condiments for dipping it into. This was worth the hike.

Parasite Museum, Ukiyo-e woodblock Ota Museum Harajuku, Nature study park Meguro

On Thursday 5 July, we visited the traditional craft museum, Mingei-kan at Komaba, next to 'my' campus Komaba II research and RCAST of the Tokyo University. This traditional old building housed a magnificent collection of handcraft items ranging from fabrics, textiles, weaving, ceramics, woodwork to the furnishings themselves - log chairs, polished wooden floors of different kinds, cabinets and dressers, etc. as well as the seasonal feature of blue and white porcelain hand painted in ink.

Image courtesy of Mengei-kan web site: old painting of geisha woman disguised as a shakuhachi-playing courtesan

We caught a train to Meguro Nature Study Park where mosquitoes voraciously attacked us despite 'medicinal' into-insect cream and wandered distractedly through the so-called 'wild' (transl. slightly unkempt but otherwise organised) garden and then to Meguro Parasitological Museum. Oftentimes, people ebulliently rave about the quirkiness and strangeness of Tokyo and I often think to myself "it's not that weird!" but you would have to say a parasite museum of snails, mosquitoes, endless varieties of worms, flukes, microscopic parasites and generally visibly large ones is unique, yet I concede rather fascinating! It appears that some Japanese scientists who founded this museum and whose labs continue to conduct work there, were very important in the discovery of many new bugs and critters, especially they seemed to favour varieties of worm and snail found in Asia and Africa that like humans as hosts. Many intriguing pictures of the consequences of these afflicters adorn the walls but most interesting were the specimens stored in formaldehyde for inspection, including the 8.8m long tapeworm extracted from somebody's stomach. Wash that lettuce!


Some impressive worms, types various - sorry I am no epxert in these matters - but notably the one is pictured beside Mum to give a sense of scale: this curled around tape worm extracted from a human being's stomach. It is 8.8m long. Others include the worms attacking the intestine [below] and hand-drawn research documentation by the founding researchers at the institute who have discovered and named many new kinds of snail, worm and other delightful creature with parasitic habits, from Asia to Africa.

Finally we made a dash for the Ukiyo-e Ota Museum of Woodblock prints and paintings in a back lane-way in Harajuku, which turned out to be frustrating to locate especially in the flurry of bodies on Omotesando darting frantically towards luxury shops! Anyway, eventually we did find the barely labelled museum of dimly illuminated prints, including some of the world's greatest. The visibility issue was extremely irritating. There are ways to light art works without damaging them as many other galleries and museums testify so the dank, dingy display was disappointing, combined with the fact that from a collection of thousands, they only deigned to show one by the famous Hiroshige. That said, this was one of our only disappointing tourist experiences. Being in Harajuku, we glimpses at Meiji-Jingu and meandered part-way down the main Harajuku street so that Dad's curisooty abotu Tokyo fruits and outrageously costumed girls could be sated. We did not see to many totally weird goths, lolitas and other local wildlife, but enough to challenge my parents, probably. It's hard for me to find this weird anymore because the cos-play outfits are sadly so commercialised/regulated/ubiquitous that they are another form of uniform and disguise. The interesting exceptions are those more handy girls who craft customisations and additions on of their own or who can't afford the trappings of the shops and therefore innovate. Some girls clearly have a fine art degree just to complete their makeup and typically drag small suitcases behind them containing cosmetics and outfits for a day's parade. A queasy squid dinner confrontation at Ginza Lion was appeased by delicious ice-creamu concoctions from Shibuya.

Hakone

Hakone, approximately 2 hours from Tokyo, nominally achievable as a 'day-trip' was so hot and humid, cloudy and misty that visibility was at all-time low and atmospheric saturation was utterly pervasion. Despite the climatic inhibitors, the scenery of this region is distinctive ad picturesque, especially as it is made accessible by a well connected route of trains to funicular to cable car to boat forming a circuit that you can make on the Hakone Pass. Purportedly there are gorgeous views of Mt. Fuji from atop Sounzan but these were completely elusive, as was the ground or even neighbouring trees at times from the 'ropeway' - Japanese for gondola or suspended cable car (whereas cable car means funicular in this context). This ropeway transports you over sulphur-steaming grounds of Owakudani (Greater Boiling Valley) after a train ride through endless blue hydrangeas and eventually on to Lake Ashi. Part of this holiday episode was the goal to experiencesome traditional Japanese relaxations and indulgances such as the hot bath/spa on the hotel's rooftop, kaiseki dinner, ryokan floor-sleeping and dining experience and Japanese buffet breakfast. So, irrespective of meteorological co-operation, there were many aesthetic pleasure to be undertaken and the plants, gardens, lake and mountains, when they did decide to reveal themselves, were lush and beautiful. Our Tenseien hotel was nestled right into a steep embankment shrouded in a jungle myriad of dense foliage and a pathway climbing up to a shrine, waterfall with Shinto white ties and a duck pond with exceptionally spotless, clean ducks happily lounging around in the crystal clear spring water coming off the mountainside.


Tenseien hotel nestled into mountainside + adjacent to stream, gorge dropping away underneath the railway brdieg the train was crossing, Mum and the Hakone Musum of Art bamboo, Mum in front of hotel waterfall

The circuit rose through Gora Park, housing a craft museum, Hakone Art Museum with its elegant Japanese garden and ceramics built to the instructions of foresightful Okada Mokichi, whose vision was that "works of art should not be monopolised but made available to as many people as possible" (1882-1955). His energetic collection of the contained Oriental artworks, ceramics from Japan even dating back to the Jomon period (700s AD) established a preservation of these artefacts and his philosophy book writes about "making lifestyle a form of art", elucidated int eh calm moss garden, bamboo grove and teahouse of the Museum and an expansive azalea 'hedge' covering the entire slope leading up to the main building that would be erupt with colour in season.


Kaiseki (懐石?) was a light meal served at a Japanese tea ceremony but is now also used for a tasting menu or, in our case, a lengthy and elaborate de-gustation including a rich array of carefully displayed and prepared culinary exoticism, many exquisite and some forever unidentifiable! Pirate ship on Lake Ashi, our 3 futons set up on the tatami floor, moss garden at the Museum of Art, local fish (just like the ones served at breakfast, Owakudani sulphur mining, kaiseki, bandaged pipes, Shinto decoration in the sacred waterfall purification spot, ropeway to nowhere, sulphur steam rising from crevasses, rooftop bath-tub

The summit of the ropeway reaches around 1200m then drops into the basin of Lake Ashi at 725m. The lake has a circumference of 21km, abounding in black bass and trout. Kaiseki literally means 'stone in the bosom', and refers to a practice where Zen monks would ward off hunger by putting warm stones into the folds of their obi. The term came to mean a light vegetarian meal served after a tea ceremony, possibly referring to the simple meals that monks ate which staved off hunger as much as a warm stone did. Nowadays, Kaiseki-ryori is an artistic and gracious Japanese seasonal cuisine that uses the fresh ingredients of the season and are cooked in ways that enhance the original taste of the ingredients. We had a great deal of fun devouring our multi-course kaiseki degustation of creative cuisine and local specialities over a couple of hours, exploring many delicasies and carefully presented morsels, while pondering, speculating and never quite deciphering other more mysterious elements. Sometimes we at things we would not normally like a single giant octopus sucker filled with plum preserve or salted fish, jellyfish salad.

Mum and Dad in their yukata sitting down for the beginning (only) of our kaiseki feast

On the road with Mum and Dad

Photos NOW ONLINE in Mum+Dad Japan Flickr set




Currently on the road with Mum and Dad. So far our travels beyond Tokyo have included: Kyoto's Heian Shrine and iris garden; staying in a hotel right near the giant crimson torii gate of the Heian shrine in North East Kyoto, close to Gion Corner; following the Philosopher's Walk in East Kyoto - Gingakuji (Silver Pavilion) with spectacular sand formations and beautiful garden; the carp-filled stream and bursts of blue and pink blooming hydrangeas; calligraphic poetry exhibition; Nanzen-in (Temple) with aqueduct and gardens - frogs' eggs hanging in the trees; Kiyomizu-yaki (Kyo-maki) pottery village and Kiyomizu-dera (Temple) high on the hill amidst an extended garden in the tree canopy and tofu restaurant; Nishijin Textile weaving Centre; Aizen-kobo indigo dyeing; Sagano Bamboo forest and Arashiyama soba restaurant and snow monkey park up a steep humid climb with mountainous views over the River Oi; Kyoto Bontanic Gardens; Inari (fox) temple with the passageway of hundreds of vermillion torii; Nikko's magestic thousand-year-old cedars, Toshigu shrine; Mashiko pottery village, former home of Shoji Hameda, National Treasure and member of the mingei craft movement that strived to preserve traditional craftsmanship in Twentieth-Century Japan, also the indigo dyeing studio and woodblock exhibition; and today, a rest day at the office, Tokyu Hands and Shinjuku by evening for the neon lights and shabu shabu dinner.

Mashiko pottery village

Mashiko, a little like Kiyomizu is a pottery village in which lamost everybody is involved with the making, marketing or sxhibiting of cermaics. Part of the Mashiko 'pottery experience' is the home of late National Treasure, Shoji Hamada, showing his extensive collection of traditional ethnic crafts or Mingei from around the world, as well as his own pottery workshop, kilns and house. www.mashiko-sankokan.net Hamada had his house was moved to its present location in 1942. The other farmhouses surrounding the cottage are locally made Mashiko houses. He wanted his collection of Eastern and global artefacts to be available for others to study and hence his foundation of this collection. The key exceptions are an indigo dyeing house and a woodblock museum. As we walked down a mountain path, the town seem inundated in dragonflies (and other insects). Hamada's home, too, was generously populated with yellow and brown large dragonflies. In the bus on the way back to the station, the ubiquitous greenness of the rice fields and rich diversity of other agricultural pursuits was impressive.





After a momentary diversion in the electronics store, we finished up with DIY shabu shabu in Shinjuku. Shabu shabu consist of briefly swishing your meat and vegetables through a lightly seaweeded water-based broth in a hotpot broiling at the table and dipping the culmination into variously sesame or soy-based sauces. This is a kind of sporting fun dining past-time like fondue, in which you are responsible for your own culinary fate! It was also Mum and Dad's first chance to see bustling Shinjuku by night parading its beautiful neon animations and signage, a sight to behold even for country folks. Shinjuku is also one of the most lively, multi-cultural and renowned pleasure districts for salarymen and foreign visitors, seething with life throughout the night with its more sordid parts and dubious cleanliness if you transgress too far off the backalley. By day, it is the lively hub of commerce and my preference, the large Kinokuniya bookshop.