tokyo midtown

my last week’s tokyo trip had some fun occasions other than attending the wedding: a reunion with my old tokyo friends and an update on what my daughter was up to, thanks to jason, who had offered me and masaco, my girlfriend, his guest room for our new york trip last year. he is now working for the american embassy in tokyo so that i could stay with him and his partner, ivo. the huge compound for american diplomats is located in a quiet residential neighbourhood, 赤坂 akasaka. it’s within walking distance from trendy 六本木 roppongi where narrow streets are crammed with night clubs and various eateries.

my friends and i gathered over “cantonese peking duck” (!!) at a “szechuan restaurant” on monday evening in 六本木 roppongi. actually, 六本木 roppongi had never been my haunt when i lived in tokyo. but this time, i liked it there for the first time ever because of jason’s place and tokyo midtown, a redevelopment area with a new commercial complex and new art museums. i visited there with masaco and jun-chan on tuesday. here are snapshots of shops and architecture in the area.

to begin with, i’d like to show you 21_21 design site designed by 安藤忠雄 tadao ando. it was raining cats and dogs. besides, it was closed. so i went back there the next day with shion, my daughter, and managed to take a pic beneath the fleckless blue sky as above.

i hated the rain, but still loved viewing the superb contrast of concrete and autumn leaves of shrubbery in the rain. i took my hat off to “the wizard of concrete” (i personally call 安藤 ando so) for that. i think the best part of tokyo midtown is lovely gardens laid out in the site.

国立新美術館 nact (the national art centre tokyo) is a stone’s throw from the complex. it was also closed. so i revisited there too the next day. back in tokyo midtown, i enjoyed browsing through the mall with fewer shoppers than other bustling areas like 渋谷 shibuya.

i got jealous of tokyoites, because the displays of muji shop in galleria were far more exquisite than my local muji shops. i’ve been a muji user since its launch in 1980 and written articles about london muji shops for exclusive muji magazines. i could not but feel tempted to buy something.

christmas decorations are seen here and there in tokyo midtown! i found snow flakes made of 美濃和紙 mino-washi (japanese paper) at 虎屋 toraya quite pretty. the confectionery holds at times a small exhibition within the shop, featuring japanese paper crafts this time.

虎屋 toraya is famous for its quality, artisanry and aesthetic. for sure, it doesn’t come cheap, though you can find its branches overseas, like we have a branch of dean & deluca across the aisle from 虎屋 toraya. the white paper decoration in the atrium is also made of 美濃和紙 mino-washi.

lastly, i should not forget about the tokyo tower, the most popular landmark of tokyo. well, it was supposed to be a fantastical cityscape of my tokyo rainy night. unfortunately, it turned out to be a total blur. i didn’t realise something was wrong with my camera. shame.

big thanks especially to jason, ivo and masaco!
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tying the knot

it was the most beautiful sunny day i’ve ever had in my life. i could find no single cloud in the blue sky. my beautiful boy and his beautiful fiancée tied the knot at 明治神宮 meiji jingu in tokyo on sunday. everything was gorgeous.

before the ceremony, families and friends all waited and chatted in a small room. then, when the young pair in traditional kimono arrived we (you may guess where i am in the picture below) had our first photo opportunity just like a press conference. (b & w photos taken by mr piano-man)

the couple signed their 誓詞 seishi (oath) in person. afterwards, louie, my son got a little bit nervous about ritualized form of shinto wedding procedure. so he rehearsed how to offer a 玉串 tamagushi, a sacred wand of 榊 sakaki tree with 紙垂 shide paper, to the gods. everything looked so divine.

with a red parasol open for the couple, we walked in a double line and moved onto the main shrine while hordes of tourists trying to capture a traditional wedding scene. unfortunately, the mother couldn’t be a photographer for the ceremony including a traditional music performance and dance and an exchange of rings, too.

meanwhile at 明治記念館 meiji-kinenkan, the reception venue with a spacious lawn garden, a traditional lion-dancer led the newlyweds to the reception hall of the historical “east-meets-west” styled retro décor where the guests and the parents of the couple awaited.


everything but the cuisine (it was french) was traditionally japanese. a ceremony of 鏡開き kagami-biraki (opening the lid of sake barrel) took place instead of cake-cutting. we shared the sake in 桝　masu (wooden cup) prepared on the table.

the bride changed her 白無垢 shiromuku (pure white kimono) into a colourful kimono in the middle of the reception. she took off a heavy wig as well. we all congratulated the two again and they became a blessed married couple now. the party was not that big but was very heart-warming. most of us wept for joy, naturally. as a mother, i was no doubt the happiest ever i could be in life.

today is my son's birthday... many happy returns, louie!!

and, have a happy weekend, everyone!!

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goodbye to november

i visited my brother in his hospital yesterday. he looked good and said he actually felt better than last week, so that we could have a long chat. i'm relieved that he’s most likely to go home before christmas. he'll soon be free (at least for a while). yes, today is already the last day of november and we will soon have christmas and the new year. but every japanese cannot help but think about momiji 紅葉　this time of the year. the word, momiji-gari　紅葉狩, reminds me of the famous title for a kabuki play (based on a noh play).

momiji-gari (literal meaning is “momiji hunt” and actual meaning is “viewing scarlet maple leaves”) is kind of our national obsession, and it is our essential and seasonal tradition that still shows our naturalist side, which i don’t want to lose. so i went out momiji-gari with my mother. we had just a pleasant walk, viewing colourful momiji leaves in my park, as it was. on my way home i saw a kingfisher flying to the branch of momiji near a small pond that is a winter scene of my park. it was a lovely sunny morning and i managed to mark the end of the autumn 2008.

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in the mean time, i spend 3 days in tokyo last weekend. i met up my girlfriends in a busy pub near shibuya station. before getting there, i had a tiny accident – the kitten heel of my short boot got stuck in a groove of the platform (merde!!) and broke when i got off a bullet train and walked on. it was not groovy, really. i’d forgotten how crowded tokyo was until i found myself struggling to keep my way. but our reunion was fun. the more excited about our girl talk we got, the louder our voices rose. i had 2 hours. though it was too short for them to fill me in, it was bad enough to increase my crow's feet.
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the main aim of my tokyo trip in fact was to visit gotenba with louie, my son, and chiharu, his fiancée, to meet with her parents. they’ve finally decided to tie the knot next year. it was a perfect autumn day for a drive from tokyo to gotenba in shizuoka prefecture. many other people also appeared to think so. the highway's heavy traffic worn mr piano-man, my ex-husband, out. i felt sorry for the driver. still, it must be worthwhile for him, too. we viewed the most magnificent mt fuji on the way. i’d never seen mt fuji that close and that big before.
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chiharu’s father, a young-looking retiree, grows crops, tea plants and various fruits and vegetables as one of his hobbies. and in the background of the garden he designed, mt fuji stood out clear against the flawless blue sky. that was kind of the scenery of sheer bliss. and her mother whom i’d met once before, is a lovely person and one of a few working mothers in the village. she seemed to have slaved over a hot stove all morning. she served us home-grown tea and homemade sweets, using home-grown ingredients.

as we left the house for lunch since they booked a table at a nearby hotel restaurant at the foot of mt fuji, her mother handed me a huge shopping bag. i was curious about what’s inside. guess what? there were many boxes of local specialties and delicacies: for example, a fresh real wasabi, which is no longer seen in our fridges (i’m sure many people have no chance to see a fresh one in life, so i show you my pics) in each bag of mr piano-man’s and mine. our brief visit went like: we got there; finished all the plates on the table; bagged plunder half an hour later and then quickly left.

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in retrospect, mr piano-man and i could've been like bandits, i’m afraid. yet, how could i never say no when her mother also offered us bags of home-grown peanuts, rice and fresh yuzu picked from their garden? we japanese almost cannot have a new year’s feast without yuzu. meanwhile, louie looks forward to helping chiharu’s father out to farm and harvest next year. it sounds like lohas, don't you think? her parents have epitomised that. i am extremely envious of their lifestyle!

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homecoming queen

yesterday, i had a little celebration. it was my anniversary of homecoming: it’s been exactly one year since i came back from shizuoka where i had cancer treatments.
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although i don’t want to recall my trying ordeal, i never forget how i was saved by my brilliant doctors, nurses, technicians, therapists, pharmacists and all the staff of the hospital who were great. more importantly, i never forget how everyone cared me: my family who are my daughter, son, mother, brother and his family; my ex-husband and ex-mother-in-law; all my old friends around the world; my new local friends; as well as my new young friends who sent me divine strings of one thousand origami cranes and video messages that made me cry. everything they did for me still means a lot to me.
* the hospital was beautiful and had almost everything from a library (even a spa!) to a café with a superb view of mt. fuji, which is mostly behind clouds in summer, though. there were also gorgeous gardens designed to encourage patients for both exercise and comfort. from day one, i’d talk to god literally while having a walk in the rose garden. i’d ask god not to give up on me in return for my promise to be a better person. then, i’d sit on my favourite bench in the ‘london pride’: a small but lovely english garden with a shed and a pond, named by the english gardener who created it. it was always there as if it was set all for me. i’d recall my london days or even i’d often lost a sense of where i was now – because it made me feel as if i was passing a summer in london.
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radio-chemotherapy was indeed a long and hard medical treatment. it’s like suffering from 24 hour-morning sick and nasty attacks of diarrhoea. but luckily, it did work for me. after 4 weeks of my initial treatments, kind of a miracle happened to me. my doctors informed me they’d cancelled the operation, which was supposed to enable me to get a further (pretty intimidating) treatment. that was why i was there. almost no other hospitals including my local one could offer patients in a particular case like me. it was only two days prior to the scheduled operation date. i had been given a detailed explanation of general anaesthetic by an anaesthetist and even a simulation on the operating table to be ready after taking a series of test and scanning. my doctors studied that the latest result and found my tumour had remarkably shrunk: small enough to continue usual treatment. shion, my daughter who regularly visited me, was with me to share the breaking news. she was speechless. with joy.
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among other fellow-fighters who were from shizuoka prefecture i was alone miles away from home, but i never felt forlorn nor minded it at all. that was convenient for me to ask everyone not to visit me. i didn’t want my friends to see me in hospital, though i looked quite well as i didn’t lose my hair. still, as shizuoka is relatively close to tokyo where my old friends and children live, masaco and osuzu, two of my old best friends, ignored my request and came to see me, and mr piano-man, my ex husband, too, managed to find time for several visits, taking me out of the hospital for a short drive. i was more than touched by their visits.
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bag of precious cherries

it is pouring hopelessly. we are having the rainy season. rightly so. yesterday, my mother called me, saying i should visit her to get some cherries, which her friend had kindly brought her. the season of japanese cherries is so short. that’s why it’s so precious, naturally so expensive. and i’ve come to think, i had no single cherry last year. because i was away. i know i tend to cast my mind back too much, even so, i do have something i don’t want to recall. as a matter of fact, last year yesterday, i left home for a hospital that was miles away from home. i was told by my doctors to be there for some three months. i was diagnosed with cancer.
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that was found on my second visit to my local hospital in mid may after taking a series of various tests and scans. my worst case scenarios had never come true. but that was an exception. oddly enough, while listening to my doctor, i was calm and collected. when i came home, i broke into tears all alone for the first time, looking up at the evening sky and cursing my stars behind the dark clouds from my balcony. in fact, i lost my father to cancer. these days, many people have cancer. but why should i be one of them? i was despair. every morning when i woke up in my bed, nothing seemed changed, so i would think, and even rethink, what the doctor told me was just a dream. a few minutes later, as my brain started working i would have to learn it was not. i was sad. so sad.
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having to tell that to my children, mother in particular, and all the people i love was the hardest duty i’d ever acted in my life. my cancer was stage 3-b. my tumour had grown too big, too difficult, so it was too risky, too late to operate. besides, it turned out that my local hospital had little confidence with my case. if there were chances somewhere else, i had no choice not to take, did i? i forced myself to check into a more specialised hospital on the foot of mt. fuji, at my doctor’s suggestion, to undergo an unusual method of radio-chemotherapy.
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come what may, i’d never regret anything i've done…that’s what i felt. i was ready for anything, even for the worst. on the other hand, i was determined to fight. while i resigned myself to the fate, i smiled and laughed, trying to look as fine or at least normal as possible. crying or pitying wouldn’t do any good in any case, you know. so everyone in the hospital would always puzzle over why i was there.
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i am home now, writing this and that, in pretty good shape. luckily enough, i've survived the cancer. well, so far. under the unluckiest circumstance the luckiest thing was a discovery: i happened to know that i was cared and loved by much more people than i thought. many, many people! i never could thank them enough for their love and compassion for me when I was having a plight. i never take anything for granted anymore. * this morning, i found sad news that tasha tudor passed away last wednesday when i browsed the new york times. she was 92. she lived out gracefully. i’d always longed for her lifestyle. my chancy life could never be like hers at all, though. life is no bag of cherries, i mean. at any rate, i should celebrate her great life as well as my own life (on kind of like borrowed time?) with these precious cherries!
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