Walkabout

Had a very nice day yesterday. Started out by getting up very early (well, 10, which is early for me) to meet up with a friend in Harajuku. We wanted to walk around and check out a few places, of course always keeping an eye out for anything unexpected that might be interesting. We started out with a visit to the Watari-Um Museum in Aoyama for the Henry Darger exhibit, which was absolutely amazing. Do follow the link to the article from the JAPAN TIMES. Darger was sort of a shut-in who died at 80, after which they discovered in his apartment a 23 000 page manuscript telling a single story, as well as 300 illustrations of the story. The exhibit had some of these images, and it was just amazing. Do try to see this if it comes to a museum near you. We then grabbed lunch at Sign, which included a visit to the tiny gallery in their basement (an art installation that included nice sounds created especially for the exhibit). Walking around we found this beautiful design/furniture shop called C?bone. We then quickly checked the URBANLENZ video installation, which had you sit down in a room on the 5th floor of a building on real grass… Then it was a quick look at some art and props from the Roman Polanski’s CQ film. Jason then had to go to work, and I continued my walkabout by heading out to Ebisu, a place I’ve only been to once or twice. I was there to meet another friend, and had a few hours on my hands, so I walked around looking for anything interesting. I spend a good 45 minutes in a used English book shop called Good Day. I picked up 3 books: A GUIDE TO FOOD BUYING IN JAPAN (I’m really developping an obsession for food), NUMBER9DREAM (a novel by David Mitchell taking place in Tokyo of which I remembered reading a good review a while back in the Asian edition of TIME magazine), and ONE SHOT, ONE BEER (a graphic novel that was actually signed by the writer). I then kept on walking, reaching Daikanyama, and then Shibuya (unintentionally – I had to take the train back to Ebisu in order to meet my friend in time). Meeting Charlie at the station, we headed to his place, where he showed me the wonder that is the new Zelda game for the GameCube. Then it was off to a place for some frozen margaritas.

A full day indeed.