city of books

all images by J

Notwithstanding this, J and I do try to explore at least one district that we've never been to each time we visit Tokyo. This year, it was Jimbocho. It's a name I almost feel should be an exclamation. Like "Jimbocho!" or "J-I-M-B-O-C-H-O!"

Especially if you love books.

villagers/creatures of habit

The Aosando art fair pairs up artists with shops in the backlanes of Aoyama. A great way to get traffic to the quieter shops, and to get people to notice new artists.

On each of our visits to Tokyo, J and I have always ended up going to the same restaurants, museums and retail stores. Today, for instance, we chatted with one of the chefs and walked down our favourite street to the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. But just as we note how Tokyo has changed (or not) each annual or biennial interval, I think we notice how we, too, have changed (or aged!!!) each time.

tunnel-visioned tokyo

Tokyo - that's all we'll be seeing this coming week! And that is plenty because it is going to be the week of the Tokyo Designers Week, 100% Design Tokyo, Design Tide at Midtown, the Emerging Directors' Art Fair, the Aosando Art Fair... But of course, J and I are just looking forward to walking in another city.

We'll try and load up the photos here as we go along! Meanwhile design critic J is appalled and depressed by changi airport.

finally!

J decided to ditch flash and started all over again with plain ol' homemade vanilla html instead. So finally!

watching 'em grow

My brother E, good citizen him, has three kids. E1 is three, E2 is one and M3 is a month old. Each is their own person.

It's been interesting just watching them grow and express their personality. E1 is gentle and agreeable ("You try. It's good. Try.") E2 is observant and a quick storm. M3 is a small parcel that sleeps and poops. So far. And it is easy to imagine the joy associated with parenthood. Brother E's is obvious. A typical conversation in the car as Brother E drives us home after dinner on Sundays goes like this:

gone to meet the bookmaker

click to view in flickr

The description of Tuas on streetdirectory.com begins "Tuas is Singapore's version of Chernobyl."

Comparing Tuas to Chernobyl is way too flippant, but to most of us islanders who don't work in a shipyard or any of the heavy, manufacturing or chemical industries, Tuas will seem somewhat surreal.

There is really no distinctive architecture - just these monotone blocks, some of them windowless or clad in metal. There are no high rise buildings. Even the trees are low and overwhelmed by the concrete and steel. The streets are wide. Or perhaps they feel especially wide because the traffic is sparse, save for that roaring truck. There aren't many people hanging or walking about as you drive by. But although the place seems deserted, there is the knowledge that inside those concrete and metal blocks, there is almost non-stop activity. Man operating machines operating the economy operating man.

Why were we in Tuas? To visit a bookbinder for one of J's projects.

It was fifteen minutes to one o'clock when we arrived.

the wake-up bird

Several weeks ago, I blogged about the calls of the wake-up bird. It has plagued me since. Not the calls per se, which I enjoy for the way they enter the HDB soundscape of bus stops, chittering mynas, chattering children and the incessant varied noises from the nearby taoist temple. But rather just identifying the bird itself.

Not satisfied with mystery, I've since been searching online recordings of bird calls. But with no real clues, it got as desperate as googling "whoo-ooo bird call". At one point, we even thought it could be the frantic call of the monkey that has wandered from the pierce reservoir and spotted hanging around our street.

But a monkey it is not.