Back in Kanazawa.
I visited an old castle (or location of an old castle) that dates back over 500 years.
I didn’t kow how to explain how to say it so i asked my writer friend (shout out marcia) to help me:
Listening to Radiohead’s In Rainbows while looking out over a castle with 500 years of history is beautiful and melancholy in a way that reminds you of everything thats past, and everything that will come to pass and by seeing those two things, makes you more able to clearly see the present.
Perfect.
and a little update from japan expert Mish:
Kanazawa castle is actually I think the newest rebuilt castle in Japan. the building started in 1995 and I think was done a year or so later. till then the only “old” part was the gate- Ishikawa mon- on your first pic. actually the grounds of the castle used to house my university (Im sooo sad that they move the uni to the mountains in the middle of no where with way too much snow). so anyways, yeah, the original castle was destroyed in the Meiji restoration around 1868 or so….sorry to spoil the mood that it set you in….
there actually only three remaining original castles in Japan.
The best wayfinding in Tokyo. Every 1oo or so meters there was a new sign. The building is brand new (opened in the last year) and connected to it is teh Ritz Carlton. (I saw 1 Rolls Royce Phantom, 1 Bently big boy, and 1 Maybach all in a 1 minute span)
beautiful.
My good friend aileen emailed me the other day and mentioned that she has family member ( i think niece) who really loves the J-Pop band News. So the last thing i did before my flight home was go on a hunt for something NEWS related. First i went to tower records and found a CD but i was looking for posters. Mayumita told me i should try harajuku. BINGO
I walk upstairs to a room filled with posters and small prints of j-pop boy bands. I had no idea what they looked like so i asked the lady if she could help me out. She spoke about 3 words of english and they were:
“Do you like boys?”
…only for the Aquino family.
They happen to have a piece of chocolate for all the days of the year. Today’s piece neatly shows the day my Dad was born.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD.
another solid identity.
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That is why i’ve put up a bunch of post in the past hour. My flight leaves tomorrow evening (i leave at 6pm and get to JFK at 5pm, the same day. yep, i’m going back to the future and i want to sleep as long as possible.
This is the best native food i’ve had thus far fried vegy dumplings.
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uniqlo, the japanes H&M, has a t-shirt store here. The best thing about it is the way in which you can search for shirts. there is a station in the back with a screen that you can touch and move shirts around and add them to your cart then print out the location of the shirt. think huge ipod screen
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the legendary bathing ape stores. maybe the originator of the super limited edition t-shirts that went for 100+ bucks. can you believe he just started with t-shirts? when they first started opening no one knew where they were. i’m missing busy workshop..it one of the harder ones to find.
they used to not let anyone even take a photo of the front of the store from what i hear. i took about 4 and a guy came out and politely asked me no more.
in the middle of the store there is a pool of bean bag bananas that kids can play in (do a search on flickr for one)
i just happened to come across this one.
the identity is still one of my favorites. even though folks say it is played out, i still really respect it and dig the brand.