Neighbourhood Exploration

I wandered around my neighbourhood the other day on the way back from the train station after work and came across a shrine that I didn't know existed. It is tucked away in a back street behind a long and wide apartment block.

The morning after, I went along and took some shots. Here is one that I am really pleased with.

Tokyo International Forum

Inside:



Outside:

Pro-Democracy on the other blog

A serious post after yesterday's frivolous one.

While I was in Aoyama today, I saw a group of demonstrators outside the United Nations University raising awareness about Aung San Suu Kyi's imprisonment.

The picture is here


Free Burma Coalition

Seeing Culture with a Sweet Tooth - part 2

I miss Taverners mint chews, chocolate limes, rhubarb and custards and sarsaparilla tablets.

Deb, a Scot who has lived in Australia for a long time says she loves anything "ye olde sweet shop" and misses Chelsea Whoppers, which I had to search for because I'd never heard of them.

Pete, friend of un-understand and an Australian, said on Google Wave that things that reminded him of his childhood were: those mint-flavoured teeth, with gums and everything. i wouldn't eat them now though, what with all that obscene gelatine... :)

and red raspberries. again, gelatine-infused. haha.

Alex White, another Australian who joined the Wave (and who I had never met, so thanks!) said: Redskins, chocolate bullets, spearmint mint leaves :)

Next sweets post will be all about Japanese sweets. Hopefully with pictures.

Part 1

Lately

I've been wandering the streets with my camera. I have been writing, though admittedly not as much as I'd like as I have a particularly troublesome chapter that I am rewriting in the novel in progress. I haven't picked up The Naked And The Dead for about a week. However, I have some pictures up that I rather like on Light Plays Tricks and on my Flickr account. Here is one:

Christmas Window

Having Your Christmas Cake and Eating It.

I am not a big fan of Christmas, it must be said, though not for atheist reasons. My Christmas aversion is down to the commercialisation of the Winter festival of light. In England, the countdown to Christmas usually starts in October. This is one of the reasons I like living in Japan: here, Christmas is looked upon ambivalently because most Japanese people do not see it as an excuse to buy expensive presents because it isn't a part of the Japanese culture.

However, it's usually around this time of year that I debate the merits of staying and going for the festive season. Of course family is important but to be honest once I've eaten and drunk my fill I can hardly move nor talk.

I'm staying in Japan this Christmas and have no solid plans. I feel that I may visit England next year but maybe not; the Christmas mania will probably drive me mad. Here, the biggest mania is probably Kentucky Fried Chicken being full or Cozy Corner having idiotic queues, but if that's the limit, I can deal with it much easier than Northumberland Street in Newcastle being full to the gills, or The Bridges in Sunderland doing its sardine tin impression.

Seeing Culture with a Sweet Tooth - part 1

Still trying to shake off my cold, I went to bed thinking about cough candy twists. There's nowhere I know of to buy them in Tokyo and if there were a place, I shudder to imagine how much they would cost. It got me thinking: even if I were in England, I would probably struggle to find such sweets unless I went to some boutique sweet shop where they cater to the nostalgic tastes of the moneyed middle class. The closest thing to a traditional sweet shop that you can find in most towns in England now is the Pick 'N' Mix concession in the local multiplex cinema.

I don't know exactly why the decline began, but I imagine that multinational confectioners could afford to buy screen advertising. I know that by the time I was about ten years old Topps' Push Pop was being heavily advertised on British television. For confectionery other than chocolate, I have never seen any advertisements for traditional British confectionery other than:

Maynards Wine Gums



Rowntree's Fruit Pastilles (now part of the Nestle empire)

Polos (ditto)

Bassett's Liquorice Allsorts



and Trebor Softmints

None of these are sold in jars displayed behind the counter of the local corner shop.

It's a shame really, because sweets now are bland. They're all tangy and tart, with no real difference in taste. There are no kids walking around with paper bags of chocolate limes, rhubarb and custards, pear drops or liquorice comfits. These shouldn't be expensive sweets because they were never expensive when I was a kid. And now, if I ever have kids, it's going to be so difficult to pass on this part of my heritage.

Getting older

I think maybe I'm driven to post this because I feel ill. It's only a cold, but I remember a time when I could shift a cold in a week. Having had this one for almost two weeks seems a bit cruel. I have to remember that I'm no longer sprightly and young. I am getting older. My thirty-first birthday looms this month. In mediaeval times I would be getting on a bit, would perhaps even be considered to be getting old.

It's not only the illness. As I get older I find that my tastes are narrower and I have less tolerance for bad art (although one may say that my own art is bad - be it my photos or my writing) because it is a waste of time, time that I will never regain. I now listen for about a minute to each track on an album and if nothing really grabs me it is consigned to the 'shite' column in my mental table. The number of books I've abandoned at around the hundred-page mark are countless. Even things I loved somewhat as a youth are not sacrosanct. With the exception of EMF's Stigma album and Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish I don't really listen to any of the albums I listened to when I was sixteen. Books? Not even On The Road. Certainly not A Clockwork Orange.

If anything has remained, perhaps it's film. I've always liked something a bit different, although not contrived. Taxi Driver is still great. Demon Seed too. I loved those as a kid. The only thing that hasn't stuck is the love of blood and guts. I can't watch very violent horror whereas I could be glued to the screen as a kid, laughing at something like Brain Dead.

I'm going to make some tea before I go to work.