2003
Comments: 5
Happy New Year, everyone – I hope this year is better than last for all of us.
It’s been a busy 36 hours. Lunch yesterday with a certain well-known novelist who’s visiting Tokyo to research a book, then on to an interview my wife and I had arranged for him with Kitakubo Hiroyuki, the director of “Blood: The Last Vampire.” After the interview we tried to go to Iseya, a famous yakitori place overlooking Inokashira Park only to find it closed. The Peppermint Café was also closed, as were all the other places we tried in Kichijõji.
So we bailed for Shimokitazawa, one of my favourite towns in Tokyo, where everything was… closed. Couldn’t take our guests to Jazz Masako, couldn’t take them to Mother’s Ruin, couldn’t take them to Shirube. We went into a place I’d never been before and it turned out to be pretty good. The sake was dry enough and anything it lacked in quality was made up for in quantity.
From Shimokitazawa I went to another dinner at the home of a friend who is – there are no other words – a bon vivant and gourmand of prodigious abilities. The main course was duck with creme de cassis, red wine and raspberry sauce with a cinnamon sugar glaze. It was magnificent, and the wines were well up to the task of accompanying it. It was the kind of meal in the kind of company that makes you realise how lucky you are, that no matter what kind of year you had things could be much, much worse. (You can see the view from Jonathan’s balcony above, looking east to Tokyo Tower.)
I made it home by 11:30, collected wife and daughter, and the three of us rode our bikes to Gotokuji, the temple famous as the home of the maneki neko, the beckoning cat.
We were hoping to ring the temple bell but when we saw how many people were waiting, we gave up on that idea. The bell tolls 108 times to ring in the new year, once for each sin of humanity. Sometimes you have to remember these things, and New Year’s is as good a time as any. Gotokuji has a beautiful bell:
Here are a couple of tolls. The recording does no justice whatsoever to the purity and resonance of the sound.
The bell at Gotokuji (420K mp3, 00:00:35)
After the temple we went to Setagaya Hachiman, a nearby shrine. You learn to cover your bets in Japan. People were buying omikuji, slips of paper which contain your fortune for the following year. Everyone was standing around hunched over their slips of paper.
After reading the omikuji a lot of people tie them to a tree somewhere on the grounds of the shrine. They settle on the branches like butterfly wishes at the end of a long migration.
I hope all of your wishes find their way back to you this year. All the best for 2003.
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Posted to General Rants • 2003.01.01 (Wed) • 22:01
Comments
Posted by James 2003.01.01, 23:06
A very Happy New Year to you and your family, Jeremy!
Posted by Scott 2003.01.02, 05:42
A wonderful way to see in the New Year Jeremy.
Hope this year is a good one for you and your family.
Posted by lil 2003.01.02, 11:05
Sounds like you had a really lovely New Years, Jeremy.
Next time you’re looking for a restaurant in Shimokitazawa, check out my new favourite: the brand new Vietnamese one that just opened on the South side (down the little alley across from the South Exit Nova school, opposite the Dorama Video store). The design aesthetic is chic, minimalist modern, and the food is truly mouth-watering. Enjoy :-)
Posted by jh 2003.01.03, 14:31
lil — Thanks! I know exactly where that is. Haven’t been there yet, but will defintely organise a visit.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens 2003.01.03, 23:56
Happy New Year, Jeremy. Best wishes to your and your family.
These were some great shots (as usual). I’m also enjoying your “lid” series. I love those Japanese boxes so much that I often display them along side what comes inside them.
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