Plus Minus Zero: An Escape from Boring

As seen in my article in InsideOut magazine.
Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa (who has designed for Boffi and B&B Italia) describes his product design philosophy as “an escape from the idea of boring.” As you peruse Fukusawa’s Plus Minus Zero showroom you’ll soon find that though all the items are everday objects – everything from household appliances to interior furnishings – they are all imbued with an elegance that makes them simultaneously futuristic and lovely. A pair of black and white salt and pepper shakers shaped like space-age maracas ($31) or a gray “torch” flashlight ($63) elevate the mundane to the sublime. Plus Minus Zeoro’s website features an informative online store, though you’ll need to be able to read Japanese to complete the transactions.

Plus Minus Zero
3-12-12 Kita-Aoyama, Minato-ku,
03-5778-5380
www.plusminuszero.jp

Tokyu Hands: Treasure Cats and More

As seen in my article in InsideOut magazine.
The Japanese word for cute is “kawaii” and this concept manifests itself less as a trend and more a creative standard. No store better illustrates “kawaii-ness” than Tokyu Hands. You’ll need at least two hours to get through all seven floors (divided into smaller sub-floors) of mischievous fun at this “creative life store.” From umbrella stands to bicycles, the store is stocked with quirky and highly-specialized items, many of which are too kitschy to pass up. Here you can pick up one of those ubiquitous “treasure cats” with the kinetic waving arms ($21), said to bring prosperity to their owners, sushi clocks ($17), colorful tissue box covers ($11-$45), or tiny figurine versions of iconic mid-century pieces like Eames chairs ($47).

Tokyu Hands
12-18, Udagawa-cho, Shibuya-ku
03-5489-5111
www.tokyu-hands.co.jp/shibuya

Amadana: The Cadillac of Calculators

As seen in my article in InsideOut magazine.
Architect Shuwa Tei’s sculptural calculators are cult items in well-heeled Japanese circles. He has designed Tokyo’s first boutique hotel (the Claska Hotel) in addition to a kitchen appliance line for Toshiba. At the Amadana flagship store in Omotosando Hills, well-dressed couples pore over glass display cases of those sleek calculators ($60-$85), angular phones with bamboo casings ($220), and retro-styled electronic housewares like a mini-baking ovens ($150). I haven’t used a calculate in years, but Tei’s classy number cruncher proved an enticing tool for calculating how much I’d been spending on this shopping outing.

Amadana
Tokyo Metro Ginza Line, Omotesando Station Exit A2
03-3408-2018
http://en.amadana.com

S and O Tokyo: Cute Happy Clean!

S and O: Sweet and Objects is one of three stores of a chain of shops from the Mori Art Center, the private museum funded by wealthy developer Minoru Mori. This is definitely the place to get your cute on as they feature lots of precious cartoony items. The store is located on an outer floor of Tadao Ando's brilliant Ommotesando Hills Mall.

www.macmuseumshop.com
03-5785-1790
3F Ommotesando Hills

Living Motif: Cool Housewares

Walking southeast from Roppongi crossing you’ll find AXIS, a design complex housing 17 stores and galleries on six levels. While there, I happened on an exhibit displaying innovative home design including an inflatable toilet and tableware featuring plates with bowl-size depressions. All of it is very futuristic and lovely. The Living Motif store on the ground floor offers the best shopping possibilities with a wide selection of design housewares and furniture. An Asian version of Crate and Barrel, except a bit more design-conscious, the Living Motif store is comfortable and homey yet their wares wouldn’t be out of place at the gift shop of a contemporary art museum. There are large metal serving spoons ($17 each) designed by Japanese design guru Sori Yanagi (his iconic Butterfly Stool, the winner of the Gold Medal at the Milan Triennale, has been a design classic for nearly half a century) and incense sets for the home ($9-$17) by the Kyoto company Lisn, using green moss, camphor and roses and are packaged in handsome sachets. Lightweight black “Koyori” placemats ($44 each) made by GALA Studio are composed using an ancient technique of twisting paper strings and coating with lacquer giving resistance and a shiny finish. Items for children’s rooms including a linen tepee and wooden blocks and stuffed animals ($35) from Bavarian toy company Sigikid add to the fun. The staff is helpful and friendly and if you’re lucky they may invite you to one of their many design events that occur regularly at the complex.

Living Motif at Axis
5-17-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku.
03-3587-2784
www.axisinc.co.jp
www.livingmotif.com

Fukumitsuya: Everything Sake

When in Tokyo, eat sushi, lots of it, and drink Sake, the rice wine that is as smooth and elegant as a silk kimono. The Fukumitsuya Brewing Company has been distilling the exquisite beverage since the 17^th century and its Fukumitsuya Sake Shop located in the back streets of Ginza functions as both an intimate tasting bar and a wonderful outlet for all types of Sake and the drink’s accessories. Peruse sculptural Sake utensils such as cast-iron decanters, wooden sake cups ($35 each) and pewter flasks. There’s also graceful thimble-sized tasting cups made of porcelain ($300 for the set). In addition to all things Sake, the store also carries a unique selection of plates, chopsticks and distinctive Japanese hand-dyed cotton cloths called “tenugui” ($9 each) that double as napkins or handkerchiefs. The Sake selections available for tasting at the tiny bar run the gamut from the modest to the extravagant including a delicate Junmai ($4 shot glass) made from red rice and tasting faintly like rose wine, or the more robust Momotose ($10 for a snifter), a matured Sake aged over thirty years. Also make sure to try the sake ice cream ($4 a dish), as rich and fragrant as the drink itself. After sampling you can decide which bottle to bring back for friends, but make sure to buy one for yourself, as many of these brands are hard to find in Florida.

http://www.fukumitsuya.co.jp/english/index.html
Monday-Saturday 11:00-21:00
Sunday and Holidays 11:00-20:00
Tel : 03-3569-2291
5-5-8 Ginza Chuo-ku. West of Harumi Dori, on Ginza W. 5th St

Tokyo Shopping: Cow Books

From my article in InsideOut:
Nakameguro is a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood of cafes, independent boutiques and design studios. Sunday morning you’ll find hipster couples having brunch with their kids, DJ's walking their dogs in collectible sneakers, and a smattering of Westerners since many embassy residences are a few streets away. It is also one of the quietest and most idyllic locations in otherwise bustling and congested Tokyo. After a relaxing brunch at one of the quaint cafes that dot the tree-lined street bordering the Meguro River visit Cow Books, a diminutive bookstore filled with design books – English and Japanese and other literary treasures. Fresh organic coffee and an inviting wooden reading table in the middle of the store combine for a relaxing book-browsing experience. If the spirit moves you, there are large English-letter woodcuts and ink pads on the table for custom-card making. A Jenny Holzer-esque scrolling digital LED sign lines the top of the bookshelves adding a bit of futurism to this 60’s and 70’s themed store. The “Letters” book ($10) by Postalco, a stationary design firm, is a collectible mini-book that looks at the visual traces mail leaves as it circles the globe.

1-14-11 Aobadai Meguro-ku (03)5459-1747 www.cowbooks.jp

Tokyo Shopping: Stationary Mecca

Ito-Ya: A big red paper clip adorns the façade of this 8-story stationary store on the main drag of Ginza making this an easy find in a sea of department stores and upscale designer flagships. After perusing Ito-Ya's dizzying varieties of stationary, writing implelements, rolls of rice paper, notebooks, calendars and greeting cards one can only conclude that there is a passion for paper in Japan. Ito-ya is the destination for all things paper-related. Everything from hand-made “washi” paper, derived from plant fibers and highly absorbent and textural, to multi-colored origami foil sheets ($3 pack of 10) is available. If letter-writing isn’t necessarily your thing you made want to splurge on a leather-bound desk calendar ($45), in both Japanese and English, it’s a handsome addition to any workspace. While you’re in Ginza, also check out Tokyo Kyukyodo across the street from Ito-Ya. Located in an historic brick storefront, this intimate store stocks hundreds of varieties of gorgeous hand-made paper and cards, some with intricate cut-outs and origami pop-ups. The regal rolls of printed paper line the walls and helpful employees will dutifully take down your selections and delicately unfurl and measure the paper making sure not to crease the designs. Prices vary according to selections but be prepared to pay about $5-$25 a square foot.

http://www.ito-ya.co.jp/
2-7-15 Ginza, Chuo-Ku. 03-3561-8311
http://www.kyukyodo.co.jp/
7-4 Ginza, Chuo-Ku. 03-3571-4429

In Praise of Lawson's

I'm on a Pico Iyer kick, probably because he's so damn good. In this essay he lauds Lawson's (above), a convenience store chain in Japan. These stores are remarkable; incredibly functional with a variety of fresh, strange food and daily use items available all day. One morning there we joined the parade of uniformed schoolboys buying their morning sushi and black bean pop tarts and for a few moments we were part of that quaint Tokyo suburb. Iyer sums it up very well:

The convenience store is a model of Japan in miniature: the triumph of function over fuss and of ease over embarrassment. Just as you can buy whiskey, eggs, pornography and even (it is said) women's underwear in vending machines, so you can all but live in convenience stores. I pay my phone bills and send my packages through the local branch of the national Lawson chain (named after the defunct American Lawson); I buy my bus cards there and tickets for Neil Young concerts. I make the convenience store my de facto office, lingering by the photocopier for hours on end and then faxing an article, say, to New York. Yet the first law of Japan, even in Lawson, is that nothing is what it seems, and that you can find all the cultures of the world here, made Japanese and strange. Here, in the four thin aisles of my local store, are the McVitie's digestives of my youth -- turned into bite-size afterthoughts. Here are Milky Bar chocolates, converted into bullet-size pellets. Here are Mentos in shades of lime and grape, cans of ''Strawberry Milk Tea'' and the Smarties I used to collect as a boy, refashioned as ''Marble Chocolate.'' Were Marcel Proust to come to Lawson, he would find his madeleines daily but made smaller, sweeter and mnemonically new.

It's common to hear that Japan has created a promiscuous anthology of the world's best styles. And the convenience store is the center of this. Tubs of Earl Grey ice cream, sticks of mangosteen chewing gum, green-tea-flavored KitKat bars: they're all here in abundance (though, in fashion-victimized Japan, no sooner have I developed a fondness for KissMint chewing gum ''for Etiquette'' than it has been supplanted by ice creams in the shape of watermelon slices). And even the smallest chocolate bar comes with an English-language inscription that, in the Japanese way, makes no sense whatsoever, yet confers on everything the perfume of an enigmatic fairy tale: ''A lovely and tiny twig,'' says my box of Koeda chocolates, ''is a heroine's treasured chocolate born in the forest.''

In modern Japan, the convenience store is taken to be the spiritual home of the boys in hip-hop shorts and the girls with shocking yellow hair and artificial tans, who try with their every move -- eating in the street, squatting on the sidewalk -- to show that they take their cues from 50 Cent and not Mrs. Suzuki. The door of my local Lawson has badges to denote police surveillance, and where the great 20th-century novelist Junichiro Tanizaki praised shadows (nuance, ambiguity, the lure of the half-seen) as the essence of the Japan he loved, Lawson speaks for a new fluorescent, posthuman -- even anti-Japanese -- future. And yet, in the 12 years I've lived on and off in my mock-California suburb, the one person who has come to embody for me all the care for detail and solicitude I love in Japan is, in fact, the lady at the cash register in Lawson. Small, short-haired and perpetually harried, Hirata-san races to the back of the store to fetch coupons for me that will give me 10 cents off my ''Moisture Dessert.'' She bows to the local gangster who leaves his Bentley running and comes in the store with his high-heeled moll to claim some litchi-flavored strangeness. When occasionally I don't show up for six or seven hours, she sends, through my housemates, a bag of French fries to revive me.

Tokyo Day 2: The Agony of DeFeet

Here's the thing about navigating Tokyo, it's ridiculously difficult. Actually getting to and fro is easy with a fantastic metro and rail system (though there 3 underground systems and each has it's own ticket system so you're constantly switching and buying tickets), but there are no addresses. None.
Sure, there's this "coordinate system," whereby addresses will say Ginza 5-8-11 and that's supposed to help you. But what those numbers represent eludes many a Tokyoite. The city was built to confuse invaders and as we were clearly Western invaders, we bore the brunt of this puzzling policy.
But we are urban trekkers and determined to find certain places, our tired feet be damned. Even asking the locals sometimes proved fruitless as most don't know where anything is and certainly can't tell you how to get there.
Density is key in Tokyo and since there are infinite things to do and see, people just stick to what they know.
The other salient element of Tokyo is that one must remember to always look up. In most American cities, even urban jungles like New York, most of the activity (restaurants, stores, attractions) are based on the ground floors - you won't find yourself going to a bowling alley on the 14th floor of a 48-story building but in Tokyo life is layered, there is so much going on above ground and signs for businesses are all listed up and down building facades.
Quick rundown:
8:30 Metro to Meguro Dori, the up and coming yuppy neighborhood with vintage furniture stores.

9:30 Breakfast at Claska Hotel, the only boutique hotel in Tokyo boasting 9 rooms each designed by a different artist.

After drilling the concierge, we get really specific directions for all the places we needed to see. Of course, we ended up asking about a thousand people how to get there on the way.
Walk to Naka Meguro, lining the Segawa river, the most charming neighborhood in Tokyo.
Finally make it to Cow Books, a compact design bookstore with many out of print books.
1:30 Lunch at a charming Hawaiian restaurant overlooking the river on Naka Meguro. We were sold on the all you can drink wine and coffee, though drinking a lot of both combined with jet lag left us pretty much the same hazy state, but it was such a nice place for a lazy Sunday lunch - a quiet and peaceful pocket of bustling Tokyo.

The walk from Meguro to Shibuya reveals a super-swank neighborhood with – gasp!- single-family residences in space-squeezed Tokyo. Some very lovely minimalist architecture as well.
3:00 Check out Tolyu Hands department store – 6 floors of wacky imaginative stuff. Purchases include a letter-shaped paper puncher, cloth tissue box cozy and a razor caddy. Happy fun cute time always!
6:30 Metro to Ginza to explore stationary stores

Detour at the Chanel building's penthouse restaurant “Beige.” We have no reservations for the Alain Ducasse-helmed establishment and we look homeless compared to the posh clientele settling in for their 17,000 yen ($170) dinners but the hostess graciously shows us the all-beige restaurant and even takes us up to the roof garden for pictures.

7:15 Peruse Ito-Ya, an eight-floor stationary store. Way too manychoices for paper and its accessroies. Proves that Tokyo is a great place for people with hobbies.

7:55 Make it to Mitsokoshi department store before closing and attempt to buy some delicious offerings from their extensive food floor – everything is discounted but there are so many options and only 4 minutes to choose! Veggie tempura it is.

8:10-8:50 Search for Fukumistuya, a sake specialty store in the back alleys of Ginza. Almost give up 4 times but deliriously tired we plunder until we find the shrine to rice wine. By now I hate my shoes, my feet, and the hard, hard concrete.

9:30 Take some pictures of the store, sample some sake, call it a day. A very long day. Arigato, Tokyo.

Tokyo Dreams

General Impressions of Tokyo. VERY CLEAN. Let's just say I wanted to take my contacts out, rub them on the sidewalk and put them back in my eyes, that's how clean the streets are. And so futuristic. LOTS of shopping everywhere. A Louis Vuitton on every corner, Chanel rules and everyone is so fashionable, there's no such thing as casual. And the gals are really into the knee-socks look. Is that still trendy? The toilets have menus here, one option includes "the sound of toilet flushing" in case you're pee shy, I guess.
Tokyo is also really safe. Friends had said that, but it's so obvious when you're there that no one would mug you, or steal or scam you. You could pass out on the sidewalk with your wallet next to you and no one would take it. Samurai code of honor, it seems.
There is a lot of English on the signs, in restaurants, so it's not difficult to communicate, though Japanese are really self-concious about speaking English but they are exceedingly polite and will help you find something and even get off the train to make sure you find your destination.
Our 2 days there involved lots of raw fish, crashing a party with drag queens, and scoping out interior design stores.
Here's a quick rundown.
6:30 am Tsukiji Fish Market - if it lives in the sea it's on sale. From gigantic tunas to tiny little crawfish. Should have worn rubber boots for the excursion. lots of fish juice everywhere

7:30 Sushi breakfast at Daiwa Sushi, a tiny 12-seat restaurant. The freshest sushi in the world since it's right in the market. After a 25 minute wait, we eat toro (fatty tuna belly, the most expensive sushi you can get) for 800 yen a piece ($8) it's a splurge, but it was probably swimming in the sea that morning.

9:00 Walk to Ginza neighborhood (the 5th Ave. of Tokyo) all the stores not yet open. Onward!
Walk to the Imperial Palace. Can't see much except garden and guards. Lots of giggling Asian tourists.
Visit Hotel Okura a mid-century modern design gem. I feel like Greg Brady hanging in the lobby.

Walk to Roppongi Hills - a tower that's a city within a city.
1:30 Lunch at Le Atleier de Joel Rubuchon. We opted for the take out cafe ( only $4 a croissant!) and it was the lightest croissant imaginable. Good job, Joel.

See the Bill Viola Show (even though already saw last year at the Whitney in New York) at the Mori Art Museum on the top floor (52nd) of Roppongi Tower.
Visit "Complex" a building of emerging art galleries in Roppongi.
5:00 Walking from Roppongi to Shibuya we stop at Superdeluxe, a lounge and media space. There's a private party going on for Hoya Crystal.

There is free food and drink, we stay. There are drag queens and uncomfortable Japanese business men, we park ourselves there. After some Awamari cocktails we decide we might pass out if we drink more due to jet lag so we set out again.

7:00 Shibuya Crossing - the most orderly diagonal crossing in the world. It's like Times Square but with a lot more people, and they're all really stylish.