"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Archives for posts with tag: architecture
12:37pm, arriving in Harajuku (原宿).
2:04pm, Omotesandō (表参道). The architecture of this building, Bulgari Café Omotesandō, continues to fascinate me.
2:22pm. Technically a flawed shot, but I like the visual cacophony of the various elements in the shot: the reflection of the street, depicting the narrowness of the typical side alley, bleeding into the basement restaurant; the ubiquitous presence of motifs and icons; the politeness in the gesture of the woman; the hashi in the lower right corner of the photo; the two foreigners; the sushi chef. Tokyo in a nutshell.
2:24pm. A papier-mâché E.T. employed as a—what else?—mascot for La Fée Délice, a café along a side street off Omotesandō.
3:43pm. The KDDI Designing Studio (KDDIデザイニングスタジオ) building features a ramp that spirals from the ground floor to the fifth floor.
4:13pm, WIRED 360º, KDDI Designing Studio.
4:34pm. WIRED CAFE is one of the rare establishments that offer truly free Wi-Fi, which is harder to find than you think. Odd, considering how Tokyo is about as tech-y as a city can get.
12:24pm, Shinjuku 3-chome.
1:04pm, Shinjuku Southern Terrace (新宿サザンテラス).
4:38pm. The same place, a year later.
9:21pm, a ramen stall outside the Nishi-Shinjuku exit.
9:32pm. Shinjuku Station East South Exit.
7:07pm, the Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum (新横浜ラーメン博物館), billed as the first food amusement park in the world. The ‘u’ in “Raumen” is intentional; while it has never been officially explained why, my guess is that it’s a portmanteau of the words “ramen” and “amusement park”.
7:10pm. The centerpiece of the Raumen Museum, dubbed the “Ramusement Park,” is a 1:1 replica of Shitamachi (下盯), the lower part of old Tokyo circa 1958, the year Shōwa ’33. It was during the Taishō (大正時代) and Shōwa (昭和時代) periods—most of the 20th century—that the popularity of ramen spread from Yokohama (横浜市), Hakodate (函館市) and other port cities to every corner of Japan. Also, of significance, 1958 was the year instant noodles were invented.
7:33pm. A kamishibai (紙芝居) performance, in which a kamishibai storyteller, riding from village to village, told stories using a set of illustrated boards on a small wooden stage on his bicycle. The global depression of the late 1920s, during the Shōwa era, saw a revival in kamishibai.
8:06pm. A shop for everything milk.
The drink bar.
The souvenir shop and exhibition hall, of which the displays are, unfortunately, only in Japanese.
It would seem most everything in Japan has a mascot. This is Taishō (大将), a cat who runs a ramen restaurant called Neko Rahmen (猫ラーメン) in the manga and anime of the same title.
The way out. Cute. For my non-Chinese readers, the sign says “the future.”
4:47pm, the long boardwalk of Ōsanbashi Pier (大さん橋) above the new Yokohama International Passenger Terminal designed by London-based Foreign Office Architects.
4:51pm, the skyline of Minato Mirai 21. On a clear day—such as today—one can see Mount Fuji.
5:07pm. Magic hour.
5:15pm. Lighted structures in a public square frame the Yokohama Customs House (横浜税関本関). The Yokohama Customs House is known as the Queen to the King and Jack that are the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History (神奈川県立歴史博物館) and the Yokohama Kaikou Memorial Museum (横浜市開港記念会館), respectively.
2:09pm, arriving in Yokohama.
2:19pm, Kishamichi Promenade, Minato Mirai 21, Yokohama. This pedestrian walkway spans the distance between Sakuragicho Station (桜木町駅) and Yokohama World Porters, and hosts the original Harbour railroad tracks, which you can see in the lower right corner of the photo above.
2:38pm, Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse (横浜赤レンガ倉庫), properly known as Newport Pier Tax Keeping Warehouse (新港埠頭保税倉庫).
11:30am, breakfast at Chambre Claire, the cafe at the museum.
10:57am, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (東京都写真美術館), colloquially known as the Syabi, a contraction of Shashin Bijutsukan.
About
34, male and very Cancerian. Often irascible, even if he is prescient to his emotions. Lives for the resonance of beautiful passages, cinematic magic and aural bliss. Dabbles in fiction writing, photography, sketching and daydreaming in his free time, even though he is paid to do just those in a professional capacity.
He is, in other words, quite a geek.
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