White Day in Tokyo

[starlady]

I continued my habit of turning up places gaijin really don't usually go by hiking out to the Morishita Cultural Center in Koto-ku, which has a "Norakuro hall" with lots of stuff about Norakuro and his creator Tagawa Suiho, who lived in the area until he was 28. I have a huge soft spot for Tagawa and Norakura, and I wound up buying a Norakuro T-shirt and Norakuro rice crackers on my way back. I'm finding that there are a lot of little kinenkan for manga-ka all over; Wikipedia is a good way of finding them. Next on my list is Hasegawa Machiko's art museum--and she was one of Tagawa's students! 

It was a nice day today, and I wound up in the Kiyosumi gardens nearby, which are Meiji-era and quite nice. I've been missing Kyoto a lot lately, but even wandering around for half an hour made me feel like I'd managed to find a bit of what I love about Kyoto here in Tokyo (I'd actually had a conversation about Tokyo vs Kyoto with the nice lady at the stationery store where I bought my T-shirt; she agreed with me about the relative merits of each). It seems that drag queens dressing up to the nines and taking pictures of themselves at gardens and shrines is a nationwide habit, not just a thing in Kyoto.

Then when I got home I was perusing this month's issue of Casa Brutus, which is all about cafes, and I realized that there are literally like four good ones on the south side of the gardens, including the first of the Japanese Blue Bottles. Well, now I have an excuse to go back.

Comments

[via_ostiense]

Blue Bottle is everywhere these days, it's crazy. It was a big deal when they finally started licensing or whatever in NY a few years ago, and now they're in a cafe on campus!