Welcome to NOTEBOOK, a cultural guide to art, design and architecture along with a resource of local news and information in English giving a realistic view of Tokyo and further afield.
Revisiting June
06/06
As Japan's border showed signs of opening the country still remained off-limits to the vast majority of wannabe visitors. We looked at who was most affected and looked towards the latest in live music, searching for ways to be "borderless" amid division.
06/07
As infection rates slowed, attention turned to an economy desperate for tourists . The wider region wrestled with new infections by protesting at signs of foreign alliances. Conversely, new Japanese films responded wearily to all of this with their take on old sci-fi characters, a rediscovered classic from Tashio period cinema which felt as relevant as it ever did, and an old cinema house that prepared to bid farewell with a documentary on walking, revealing strange, unusual tales of a world to those who willingly travel on foot.
06/08
As challenging weathers descended on Japan, and rural areas slowly emerged from lockdown, sustainability and recombinant fabric described the way old things were being put to good use, meeting the challenge of an ever-changing landscape.
06/09
Well-known Chinese restaurant Heichinro called it a day as FINGER IN THE SOUP, an artist-run diner in Tokyo's Kichijoji, revisited the experience of traveling abroad.
06/10
The cost of domestic oil and gas, while the price of Philippine Bananas also climbed. And as unsuspecting Japanese holiday makers returned home to find their gates missing and sold for scrap, the artist Mika Tajima considered the translation of an old idea into diverse material, pondering what it means to be human.
06/13
Asteroids and Chirashi: As news of what the Hayabusa2 space probe found buried in an object floating out in space was revealed, a new book on Japanese Punk uncovered a counterculture found here on Earth.
06/14
Cinemas and Summits: The Asia Security Council met as we looked at several independent cinemas in and around Tokyo that were screening the latest films and documentaries from in and around Asia.
06/15
With a faltering start, the border opened for some tourists but not without additional red tape. Meanwhile, an old apartment building home to Astro Boy's creator Osamu Tezuka opened to celebrate his work, the work of others, as well as a quiet, suburban part of the city, post-pandemic.
06/16
With reopening borders, the rules of etiquette for mask wearing here in Tokyo were best described as vague. Even advocates were having their doubts. However, the clearest example often came when eating out. Places like Oban-zushi in Kabukicho showed that mask wearing was about keeping others comfortable, ‘masking’ the distance between people without drawing attention to it.
06/17
Police tackled a suspect nailing straw dolls to a sacred tree and monitored the campaign trail for an upcoming election. All this alongside painting shows by Gerhard Richter at MOMAT, Ryuichiro Otake at Hagiwara Projects and Richard Aldrich at Misako & Rosen in Otsuka.
06/20
Hybrid Economies: Toyota's EV technology and the upcoming Linear Shinkansen train line came under inspection, while nominees for this year's Akutagawa and Naoki Prize for Japanese literature were announced, each dominated by a strong selection of female writers.
06/21
Earthquakes hit Ishikawa as Action 4 Cinema in Tokyo strives to champion diversity in the Japanese film industry.
06/22
A bumper crop of strawberries from Tochigi was overshadowed by inflation, while NATO decided whether or not to accept Ukraine's application for membership, and a building by British architect Nigel Coates highlighted the tense and strange relationship between Russian and Ukraine embassies in Tokyo.
06/23
More currency news as the JPY kept falling against the USD. Books were finally closed on last year's pandemic-delayed Olympic and Paralympic Games. Places like Shou-chan in Shiinamachi serving the best fish, made everything else happening in the world seem unimportant, if only for a few *very important* hours.
06/24
Okinawa marked the 77th anniversary of the end of war in the Pacific while Japan's Kashiwa naval vessel arrived in London. Keijiban is a noticeboard gallery in Kanazawa city that showed work by Katinka Bock while the UK music label 4AD released the Japan-only compilation “Pleasures & Treasures” available only from Tower Records Japan.
06/27
Enthusiasts and obsessives come in all shapes and sizes. Take tori-tetsu, a nationwide group dedicated to photographing trains. One small group in Tokyo were also arrested for stealing Lego. And then there is the age-old obsessive Mori Ogai who celebrated his 100 anniversary this year – a physician in the Imperial Japanese army who travelled to Germany and became one of the first to translate German literature into Japanese. And last but not least, David Bowie, who walked through Kyoto with photographer Masayoshi Sukita in 1980 who happened to have an exhibition of pictures taken that day on display near Kyoto Station.
06/28
Summer in the city began with a vengeance as extreme heat swept through the country. And with the heat came Nobi (Fires on the Plain) a 2015 film directed by Shinya Tsukamoto which played nationwide to commemorate the 77th anniversary of war in the Pacific. A talk event and new book featuring the director pressed home the point that, regardless of which generation it touches first, war needs remembrance.
06/29
Mask wearing was officially relaxed as the UK and Japan reaffirmed their trade in produce from Fukushima. Yet real hopes rested with tourism, despite Tokyo Disneyland, for example, limiting its visitors. Closer to home, the As-Salaam Masjid mosque sits between the merchants and manufacturers of Okachimachi in Tokyo, and is topped with a Turkish dome built, coincidentally, with the help of Tokyo Disneyland.
06/30
Japan announce the 2023 G-7 Summit would be held in Hiroshima as Peach airline resumed international flights to and from other parts of Asia. And as Shibuya cleaned up its act, Tokiwa-Shokudo in Sugamo continued to serve Sanpei-jiru and sake around the clock.
NOTEBOOK episodes are published 3 times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Things that don’t fit into each episode will appear here for when your visiting or thinking of visiting Japan.
We have recently been adding field recordings from different parts of the city and around the country, while interviews explore things that others might (or might not) recommend.
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