No Tomatoes

It isn’t quite Yuki’s birthday –that’s next week –but we were celebrating anyway. That required a table big enough for ten and cheap food, so presumably entering ‘big cheap’ into Google, Satomi eventually found [], perhaps listed just after McDonald’s. Aptly, it is cited right next to the Arches near Bunkamura, Shibuya. Vividly, we were given red peppers absolutely swarming a few kernels of pork like scarlet ants on a sugar lump. At first I thought it was okay, but moments later I was gasping only to find no water on the table. Everything else stumbled clumsily onto the table from the adjacent kitchen in a drunken parade of mediocrity. The prawns tasted like wet dust and the beef more jerky than tenderloin –a lesson in greed and using search engines to find restaurants. The Chinese sake, however, was refreshing, like a plummy sherry poured over bark to lend sullen woodiness. More importantly Yuki was absolutely thrilled with her headphones, and it was good turn-out for her party, but perhaps its time someone relieved Gootomi of duty.

Dear Lucienne, or Mrs Day, it would begin… do you still have that tapestry I was interested in? Several years ago while finishing at RCA, I met the rather wonderful Lucienne Day, one of the foremost British designers that provided optimism after the war. Her graphical nature contrasted strongly with the paisley offered by those still clinging to William Morris… as you can tell, I no longer write for Weekender, though I am no longer paid by them despite using a few articles of mine. But I don’t want to turn into a grumble, I want to enjoy writing the first thing that enters my head again, so to that extent let me wander around my tapestral musings, deciding whether or not to buy Lucienne’s ‘Memory Game’. It’s tempting, though the Rolex on the bedhead behind reminds to watch my money. Mina suggested that I could at least enquire, and certainly upon seeing the wonderful stimulation of Milen’s house last night I feel that I too should make the most of unique options available to me, for that defines our homes and ourselves more than how much we buy off the peg. Or the watch store. 

I’m not quite sure how to link this to Fukuhashi, and I was originally going to refer to the Alias modelling course I have been doing.  The less said about that the better, but I suppose I should say more about the restaurant. Marty was still in Japan and wanted to return to Yakitori Alley –you can see where this is heading –while Mina was there to assist with directions. It was 20 minutes before they turned up, yet it was they who had sent the invitation to me as I was leaving HQ in Saitama. I like 20 minutes, it's a nice length of time, enough to have a sup of tea or make some coffee, check emails, or make a detour down a side street. It isn’t quite enough to finish a drawing for me, and as they eventually approached I had to down my sketchpad and scribble of the smoky alley.

Despite the omission of orphans I think Dickens would like this place. Wilde might suggest that we are all live in the gutter, but some of use look to the stars, yet in Yakitori Alley even if you look to the stars you see a gutter: there are ducts and pipes and wires and signs, as if having free-fallen from the sky and consequently wedged between the shacks. I almost wrote shops, but that implies electricity and modernity, though I suppose the single bulbs in the shabby lanterns have to run on something. Perhaps pork: I’ve noticed a few yakitori places now offering pork: it is addictive, as meat and fat alternate along the stick. I always place my teeth just after the fat as I pull it off to ensure the most unctuous mouthfuls. Meanwhile our slightly frosty host was still trying to yank us to sit indoors. We refused preferring to nurse our thimbles and swivel on our bar stools, clocking black mops of businessmen dotting the street until they are consumed by darkness and grey plumes drifting from the grills. I returned again with Sean for his birthday: nine years in Japan yet not once here. What a present.

Bars are essential for holding up buildings, clothes and communities. They also form one half of the only two jokes whose punchline is ‘ow’: a man walks into a bar…and what Michael Jackson says when he hurts himself. Personally I prefer cat jokes, but seldom are they on the menu.

Mina’s already at work which gives me time to indulge in my humour and steadily recall the outings of the past week or so as I linger in bed. I was in Aoyama looking for glasses, so decided to call Tobi who works around there. Already gone, I pursued my sight search and, more crucially framing, before trotting down to Shibuya where I met him instead. It's a nice walk, and one I do quite often now. It takes me past UNU, and avoids the hub-bub of wanton commerce. Tobi and I have the same taste in bars, and we agreed on the fabulous small hutches that litter the shadow of Yamanote-sen. ‘Tight’ bar, like Bell & Ross, or ic Berlin!, all represent the concept of Obvious-Alternative in their fields, I think. They are each the most comfortable way to say ‘hey, I’m different’. Apple was, and often still is like this. They also commercialise great aesthetics, and make people consider this as a value-adder beyond just accuracy/clarity/speed whatever. But having found these nooks beside the mainstream, so it means that I cannot wear ic berlin!, I cannot wear my Bell & Ross to Designer’s Night, and Tobi and I eschewed Tight and walked one door further.

It isn't apparent this door exists; it looks like metal patchwork on the tawny blanket thrown over these boxes. In the depth of what constitutes wall-thickness in Britain, however, was a tiny staircase threading its way to a moulded coal-pit, only in the attic. Inside, we were the only people, and were surprised to see thick window-sills perhaps hiding further staircases. All walls were black with fat radii that made me think that seals had been plastered over, with two little portholes letting the rush of trains spiral in air. Two bottles of beer soon perched like rooks on the ledge hemming stove and bar-surface, as the one woman pretended to not understand English so as to encourage further distribution of haricot from Tobi’s tales. 

Da da der da daaa. I hate dum, tish and ders being used to mimic sound on paper. It never reflects what has been heard with the rare exception of my first piano lesson. A new building has been erected alongside Nakameguro’s train station, and as I change trains in the evening, so I often stare across into masseurs and flutists. There is also a sign of a piano. Perhaps inspired by a recent viewing of Groundhog Day, I set off there when I met Mina at the weekend. God that’s strong coffee. She was roasting beans when I met her then went off together to sort a free trial.

Da daaa. My last notes of a dischorded Beethoven: not bad for a first timer, though it surprised me that having been given two hands, they cannot be used at the same time, while I have to sit like a slightly camp manicurist. Mina had met me just before at the train station, incidentally with the rest of the Chrysler studio, now roaming Tokyo while waiting for projects. She disappeared under towel and pyjamas to have a massage while I was led into a soundproof room by a dwarf.

Thirty minutes later and it was all over, so a Mina jelly and I began walking back to Yutenji when pizza, once again, entered our minds. We’ve been having it rather a lot recently, it seems. Sean and I went to the one around the corner when I first arrived; I haven’t been there since. Like Savoy’s just two options, but unlike there, [] has three floors to fill. Like the same engine being used to power a pick-up beside a supermini, and here one cannot watch the flames drool over the dishes. Either way, it isn’t half bad, and the ruccola salad pretty good under its long, lounging flakes of parmesan, although Y1000 for it seemed a bit steep. In all the bill came to Y5300 for two pizzas, salad and booze. A bit much for a Tuesday night, but at least the lesson was free. Boom-tish.

I should have written about Savoy before, perhaps when I actually went there. Pizza again last last night reminded me of this little place, perched up on crooked steps behind Roppongi Hills. If that lends it some grandeur, don’t hold your breath: this is simply stools and oven, and all the more pleasurable for it. Felix and I went there to discuss Orca, and of course lovelives. Or his at least. Perhaps getting the wrong end of the stick, the staff soon offered pink champagne as we sat. It took a quick glance at the other, similarly refreshed diners to reassure that chat had not been mis-eavesdropped. 

The menu is absolutely ostentatious if you were expecting just one pizza option for Savoy offers two: margherita and marinara. No, that isn’t one topping, the next in the list will not appear, so order them both. We ate both, plus a couple of Yebisu beers, while surverying a rather more intriguing web of hideous skinny goateed white-guy meeting the stiff of a mother-in-law-to-be. No doubt she was impressed that this special meal should require him to use no cutlery and just the slightest dab of shirt on cheek. Fortunatley there were better things to look at, most engaging of all the uncovering of plump pillows of dough from a pale wood draw, before being lifted aloft like an infant from a pen, and flattened with a fist, also like an infant from a pen if you want to be arrested. The short time the disc is in the oven gives one little time for witty asides, however, and my mouth was incessantly full thereafter.

One aside, however: I recommended this place to Danny, a new guy in the studio from LA. He’s here with his wife: they both loved it, and so did we.