Temple in a Garage

I got sidetracked on my way home Saturday afternoon stumbling across this hidden gem in Roppongi. This temple is less than 500m from the Roppongi Hills complex, and is so hidden its entrance can only be accessed through a parking garage.

Behind me in the photograph is an elaborate second affair clearly built with recent money. The graveyard is huge behind both buildings and probably draws large yearly revenues. (In Japan, it is common for ancestors to pay [large] yearly fees to temples to maintain burial plots.) Numerous expensive European imports were parked in the garage and on temple grounds.

Nonetheless, it remains a quiet and beautiful escape from the bustle of Roppongi Hills.

Coin Locker Rules and Regulations

The Japanese sometimes wonder why more tourists do not visit their wonderful country. Additionally, both sides frequently observe they cannot understand the other's motives. Signs like this do not help the situation.

This picture is not a joke. They are the instructions for my coin rental locker at Roppongi Hills and include, "but are not limited to", the prohibition to store (3) animals, (7) corpses, and (8) items that emit foul odors.

The most painful part: The management company dutifully posted the same instructions in Japanese on the left (not pictured).

Tokyo Tower II

One of the first photographs I ever posted on my blog was Tokyo Tower at night. This weekend I went to the top of Roppongi Hills to see the new UBS Corporate Art Collection exhibit was "Art is for the Spirit". As part of the entrance ticket, you may also enter the 53rd floor observatory.

Unlike New York City, Tokyo is mostly a low rise city. Unbounded by water on three sides, it has endlessly expanded for the last fifty years. Only the very center in Otemachi and Marunouchi has a collection of high rise buildings like American cities. Most tall buildings are built as separate complexes with many adjacent smaller buildings, shops, restaurants, residences, parks, and museums. Each is virtually a small scale city at completion. This style of construction began to dominate Tokyo in the 1990s and has continued since. The peak of this style was Roppongi Hills. Stretched over a vast area, it encompasses many, many activities in a single interconnected complex.

I took this photograph shortly after the sun set, so my long exposure captured the sky as royal blue. The observatory has a ledge next to the windows so it is easy to steady cameras for long exposures required at night. Some of the more enthusiastic photographers brought their own elaborate equipment including external (digital) screens and large tripods. It was a typical Japanese touring affair.

Winter Citrus

Fruits are amazing in Japan. There are two ways the fruit is so perfect when it arrives at your local supermarket: lots of pesticides or most used as animal feed. Probably, it is a combination of both.

Winter citrus is in high season right now. Unlike the United States, fruits are strictly seasonal in Japan. They import very few fruits from (nearby) tropical countries. This results in waves of fruits throughout the different seasons. Giant grapes arrive in the summer, apples in the fall, oranges in the winter, and finally strawberries as spring approaches.

These oranges were part of my breakfast this morning.

Nozawa Onsen VI

This is a picture of the town center, less than one hundred meters from our hotel. Some kind of festival must have happened the week before to hang the red lanterns.

Everywhere on this street were small shops selling omiyage (お土産). These are small traditional Japanese snacks to bring back to friends and coworkers from holidays.

Nozawa Onsen V

The snow started just after we arrived on Saturday morning and continued for the entire weekend. They had also incredible snowfall the week before.

The second day on the slopes, so much snow had fallen overnight that expert-level slopes were near impossible to finish. Snowboarders and skiers alike had to dig themselves out from powder snow up to their waists.

In the bottom right of this picture is a barely recognizable "mini" minivan. It is the same model as the car on the left.

Nozawa Onsen IV

Just across the street from our hotel was a hotel built in Scandinavian style.

Check out the snow!

Nozawa Onsen III

Since our group was so large, they set aside a special room for our dinner with a long table. The men sat at one end and the ladies came shortly after.

You can see the many dishes laid for each setting. This is traditional eating at its best in Japan. Instead of a single plate with a few items, many tiny plates and bowls are -- what seems -- endlessly brought by an attentive staff.

Pickles, sashimi (raw fish), meats (grilled on your own personal mini-grill), vegetables, and rice. By the end, you are stuffed!

Nozawa Onsen II

The snow in Nozawa Onsen was incredible. I have never seen so much. I'm talking about feet of snow. Sometimes I laughed out loud seeing cars and buildings so swamped with snow.

Special snow removing machines run on the roads to literally cut a path through the snow. They can't plow like New York City; there is too much snow. They use giant snow blowers attached to the front of dump trucks to carve the roadway.

I opened the window in my hotel room to get this shot.

Nozawa Onsen I

I traveled to Nozawa Onsen (野沢温泉) last weekend in a group of ten people for some skiing and onsen'ing. (An onsen is a bath fed by spring water heated deep in the earth.) Our hotel was right around the corner from the town's public bath. Inside was little more than wooden shelves for placing your shoes and clothes. Strip down and jump in. There are few other rules.

One of the Japanese guys managed to convinced one in our group to drink the onsen water! It was pale green and had bits floating around. (Each onsen source in Japan has different properties -- particles, dissolved or not.) After he took a few sips from what looked like a teacup, they cheered.

Of course, our hotel (旅館：ryokan) had its own onsen, but it is part of the village experience to hop in with the locals. The baths were divided between men and women, and further by hot and scalding water. You can imagine the foreigners were mostly in the hot bath, and the older Japanese men were camped in the scalding bath. One with the scalding onsen? Ask me in forty years if I still live here.

Yakisoba Sandwich

Here it is: The big yakisoba sandwich. One of my coworkers says this is a good snack if you are looking to "carbo-load". Think of it as spaghetti on a roll.

If all you ever hear is Japanese people eat sushi and live forever, you might be inclined to believe junk food is virtually banned. Not so. Pimply faced schoolchildren flock to these snacks, as in any country. (India has a mess of fried snacks that I will conquer on a holiday one day soon.)

Not only is the sandwich a mere 126 yen, but it comes with this unappealing saran wrap, clearly showing the grossness of the whole affair. The day old mayonnaise (マヨネーズ) is pressed against the wrapping, eagerly awaiting a hungry schoolboy with poor complexion. Snacks like this keep dermatologists in business in Japan.

Yakisoba is a snack food sold at festivals and beaches; both specialise in carnival-like street food. It consists of thin noodles fried with soy sauce. To be honest, the taste was okay, and the bun wasn't too soggy -- no small miracle of Japanese food science.

My New Jacket II

Admittedly, a post like this might get me in trouble one day. If a hedge fund blows up under my management, or I am caught tapping my foot in an airport bathroom stall... CNN will be looping this video for a week.

This is my first experiment with short video clips. My camera can shoot five frames in rapid succession. (Newer ones sound like a machine guns the lense operates so quickly.) I frequently shoot five or ten shots and pick the best later.

Showing this clip on Blogger.com was unusally difficult. I first needed to create an animated GIF image using GIMP. Then, I stored the file on PhotoBucket.com because Blogger.com does not supported animated GIFs. Finally, I can link to the shared image.

Enough shop talk: This is my new jacket, dammit. The previous post explains the shop. I'm also showing off my new shades from Top Shop. I was recently introduced by a friend to the Top Shop boutique in Tokyo's Meiji Jingu Mae (明治神宮前) between Omotesando (表参道) and Harajuku (原宿). Top Shop always held the coveted inside cover advertisement for i-D Magazine when I was a faithful reader in San Francisco and New York. A touch of Michael Jackson circa 1985 coming soon...

My New Jacket I

I finally found a store I could love in Tokyo. Most clothing stores in Tokyo are from American and European designers. Sometimes, Chinese and Hongkong designers make a bigger splash than home grown ones. Living in San Francisco and New York, I always thought it strange the lack of Japanese designer boutiques. Brands exist, but they don't shine like American and European ones. And oddly, even in Tokyo, the American and European ones continue to dominate Japanese brands.

Admittedly, I am partial to the Tokyo-style of boutiques for American and European designers. The layout of stores and space available for men's clothes is better to me than San Francisco or New York. I wonder if Japanese feel the same about shopping in San Francisco and New York?

The store -- or rather brand -- is called The Suit Company. They have stores throughout Japan, and they embody the young, fresh Japanese salary boy. That's right -- you heard it here first: salary boy. Forget about the tired and worn salary man (サラリー・マン) and office lady (OL). The new generation isn't afraid to spike hair, wear pointy shoes, and viscously clash stripes and colours. They have taken the uniform from a previous generation one notch up.

Tighter waists, smaller shoulders, and slimmer fits are the style. They are barely out of the tanning salon in Shibuya (渋谷), running to the steel towers gracing Tokyo's growing skyline. If Otemachi (大手町), Marunouchi (丸の内), and Shimbashi (新橋) were for the salary man, Minato-ku's (港区) Akasaka (赤阪), Toranomon (虎ノ門), and Roppongi (六本木) are for the salary boys and girls.