Hullo..

Yet another slow weekend. It was raining crazily on Saturday night but before that, I went to an excellent acoustic live music session by Eric, a friend’s friend, who came on with fresh original scores and then wrapped up with an encore rendition of Halleujah. Surprisingly he’s still unsigned but he is so good it should only be a matter of time. Unfortunately before Eric came on a couple of Japanese bands were on, and after the accordian player’s set I really wanted to leave straightaway. Luckily Eric came on right after and my night got heaps better. Tokyo bars are really interesting, they’re mostly in the basements, or narrow 3m slots in the street, but I think that after a few stiff drinks, no one really notices how close the walls are anyway….

The weather was really good the past few days but after Saturday night’s storm the weather is horribly hot again. Went to the Edo-Tokyo Museum and it turned out to be much better than I expected (I had very low expections, the Malaysian museum has permanently scarred my perceptions of what museums are). The Edo-Tokyo Museum was interesting because it gave an insight on current items and practises in modern day Japan that are linked to practises dating back to the 1600s…I wish that they had given more explanation to WHY Japanese people are so ready to accept and assimilate Western culture because the rest of Asia (or at least South-East Asia) have mixed reactions towards Western culture – but I guess it’s not something someone can explain in a museum anyway. Museum design was pretty good, it looked interesting and impressive from the outside but inside it took backstage to the displays without being boring.

Visited the supposed Sumo Stadium next door because I read that they had a permanent exhibition, but all they had were sales on second-hand(I think they were) designer handbags and jewellery. I’ve never seen so many out-of-season Chanel/Vuitton/Gucci/Hermes/Tiffany etc stuff before. I might have bought something but the hordes of grandmas and grandpas kinda tipped me off that the stuff they were hawking weren’t super-cool… But they kept the most important thing open at the Sumo Museum, that is the GIFTSHOP where you could buy sumo shaped cakes, sumo mugs, sumo dolls and Hello Kitty Sumo mugs. Kitty-chan gets everywhere in Japan, the other day I bought a Kitty-chan snack! It had Kitty-chan on the front, and pink sparkly cereal puffs that tasted like Super-Sugary-Fruit-Loops.

My next foray into Japanese desserts shall be to try a parfait (dessert). You see Japanese girls all looking dreamily at the plastic parfait displays all the time. They are essentially 7 cubes of fruit, a dollop of whipped cream and a teaspoon of icecream, all arranged in kawaii manner and presented with the kawaii price tag of 800yen (US$7.50) . In comparison, a bowl of noodles costs 350yen, a Starbucks tall coffee costs 350yen and Haagen-Daaz costs 262yen. 1/20 a melon and a teaspoon of whipped cream must be awfully expensive in Tokyo.

After the visit to the (giftstore) of the (so-called) Sumo Museum, I looked at the Kanto Earthquake Memorial (it took less time than expected) but I had also seen Philippe Starck’s Asahi Hall (aka the Giant Golden Turd) from the train and proceeded walking..and walking…in the general direction. I found the hall after walking in the direction of the Japanese men swilling Asahi beers. Afterwards I realised that I had walked all the way to the Asakusa temple once I saw all the tourists and cheap souvenir stores.

No email last weekend because I somehow managed to get lost in all the red-light district in all 3 places I went to (Ueno, Roppongi and Shinjuku) I think I’ll try to get myself on a dive boat to a deserted tropical island with white sands somewhere off Malaysia when I get back Aug4.

Ahhhh…

Shi.