Temptation by New Order

Cafe Mozart

Like most things from the West, Japan's relationship to coffee is extremely complicated. To judge by advertisements of a depressed and exhausted Tommy Lee Jones backed up against a wall and cajoled into holding a can of "Boss" coffee and the iconic jar of "Creap" coffee creamer in every staffroom, it would be easy to assume that Japan's approach to coffee consumption is as twisted and misguided as the seaweed-corn-mayonaise-hotdog pizza from our neighborhood Dominos.




Unlike Korea or China, there are no "tea houses" for socializing on this island, no one brings their ipod or homework to a tea cermoney. Drinking matcha is a solitary and silent experience. In other words, for the coffee house experience in Sendai, you have to suck up your misgivings about corporate ethics and go inside a Starbucks.
Unless you know about Cafe Mozart, which makes Seattle's collection of self conscious hipster cafes look as authentic and pretentious as a Leonard Cohen cover sung by on American Idol.

Marni

Marni is brilliant. The luxe Italian bohemian's answer to the slick sexed up vamps from houses like Gucci or Versace. Their earthy weird pieces make my heart beat a little faster. If aliens wore jewelry, it would look something like this. If Fellini dreamed about necklaces, they would like something like this.

Harajuku Bead Shop

Casey and I spent the last weekend in Tokyo. On a mission to find Milkfed in Harajuku, I stumbled across this amazing jewelry supply shop. Out front was fake moose whose antlers were dripping in chains and jewels and I promptly abandoned my search and got lost in front of a wall of swarovski crystals. The girls who worked there were eager and sweet, taking off their own jewelry to show me how they made it and giving me advice despite our language barrier. I am now obsessed and have spent the better part of the day fantasizing about the necklaces I am going to construct once I get home.

Parenting

Some friends of ours, a lovely married couple from Hong Kong, are undergoing the laborous and exhausting process of leaving Japan. Concluding 8 years of missionary service in Japan, they are tying up loose ends while being parents to their 2 infants. Packing up is hard, but packing up in Japan is infinitely more complicated, so I was surprised when my offer to help in anyway with moving was responded with a request to babysit instead.

I worked for 6 months at a children's school nearby my college when I was 18. My approach to day care was very much influenced by my father's approach to raising my brother and I. "Oh, you want to eat the whole tub of ice cream? I'll get you the spoon. In bed? Okay, let's get you a bib." And then I would insist on eating it next to my sleeping mother and drip ice cream all over her pillow. I even talked him out of taking me to the doctor for a week of daily vaccinations (Kuwaiti medicine-don't ask) when I was seven. So when the children I was in charge of serving strictly measured servings of carrots to requested the bag of marshmallows they spied in a partially open cupboard, I was more than happy to break open the bag and oblige.

But I picked up another habit, this from both my parents, a tendency to manipulate by making up scary stories. My parents told me there was a genie (djinn in Arabic) who lived in the crack between two pieces of carpet. At night, the crack would glow red with fire and the genie would come out and confiscate the toys I didn't put away. This wasn't Aladdin's genie but the menacing Islamic variety, and I clearly remember tearfully apologizing to a kidnapped Poppel for my carelessness. And being careful not to piss off the genie further by stepping on his carpet crack.

Whenever I had recess duty, the boys playing outside would kick the ball over the fence and into a rich neighbor's back yard. Shame-faced, I would have to walk over, ring the doorbell, apologize profusely and get told off everytime this happened. Because it was such an ordeal to get the ball back, the boys enjoyed this tremendously and wouldn't waste any time kicking the retrieved ball right back over the fence again. When I took away the ball, they started throwing thier shoes and anything within reach over the fence, laughing their little heads off. After a few days of this, I came back from the neighbor's looking as terrified as I could manage and told them in a whisper that we needed to have a meeting. I explained that the woman next door identified herself as a witch, and told me she is very good with fingerprints. She warned me that from now on, any items thrown over the fence will be examined by her for the offender's little fingerprints. And then she will use her magic to steal the offender's fingerprints and identity, so that when their parents come to collect them, there will be nothing to distinguish them from the other little boys. So their parents won't recognize them but instead go home sad and empty handed, wondering what became of their son. And then the boys will have to live at school forever or something like that.

Anyway, it was very effective. Too good to be true. Nothing went over the fence after that. And they begged me for more stories about the witch next door (and believe me, after my numerous encounters with the woman next door, it didn't require much imagination to think of her as a witch!) The fun lasted until there was a meeting with my supervisors where I was told that the boys were too worked up to go to sleep at night and the parents were questioning the source of their vampire stories. To say my supervisors were unhappy was an understatement, and looking back I marvel at my inability then to see why they were concerned. I was defensive because, after all, this was how I was raised and if the kids were having fun and behaving, then why not?
So tommorow, little Ken and Hitomi will be dropped off. They speak Cantonese and understand some Japanese. Our apartment is currently a moldy radio shack littered with books, bottles and all kinds of wrappers. We have no idea how we are going to entertain them. All we have going for us is a bag of cheerios and Casey's "helicopter" rides. Maybe it is a good thing we can't tell stories in their language because Casey's imagination is much darker and I suspect his "parenting" approach isn't too far off from mine.

What we made last weekend

Only in Japan

Modern Alchemy

Two years ago, my mother and I were killing time in a store off the beaten path in the univeristy district. I found a table of intriguing candles poured into frosted glass bowls and packaged in silk hat boxes. Labeled as the "Dangerous, Rare and Obscure Botanica Collection," they were scented with poisenous flowers (Angel's Trumpet, Nightshade, Cobra Lily...) and looked like something one would find in old Miss Havisham's mansion. Or a curiosity shop. Or possibly a Tim Burton movie. The owner of the store noticed how transfixed I was. "Oh, those are made by a really interesting fellow. His name is Douglas Little and he wears a curled moustace, silk tie and top hat. He actually grows these poisenous flowers in his backyard. Since we started carrying his line, I've saved every article from our correspondence. The stuff he writes in a simple email is incredible. He is really from another era. A true fin-de-siecle."

He apparently took it to the next level with his recent additions (Modern Alchemy line) including:
Boston Tea Party (English black tea thrown with brackish seaweed absolute)
Ex Libris ( A library basically. Parchament and leather bound volumes)
Salem (Burning wood: New England maple, hickory and walnut)
Tincture of Winchester (Gun powder and smoke)
Opium Den (Smoldering resin, opiates and tobacco fumes)
Speak Easy (Gin, pipe tobacco and wood)
Cake Walk (Madagascar vanilla, chicory and cotton leaves)

Beautiful. I am hoping to secure one of these for the long Japanese winter ahead. I have visions of Casey and I huddled in a tatami room with blankets, stacks of books, icy hands and the humming kerosene heater. And one of these candles would definitely add ambiance, if not help mask the kerosene fumes.

Elsie II

Penelope is turning seven. It is Saturday, and her mother is throwing her a birthday party in their small backyard. Elsie spent considerable time on the invitations, commissioning one of the local artists who eats out of the palm of her hand to paint a surreal picture in celebration of Penelope’s birth. The picture was color copied onto the invitations which frightened its’ young recipients and justifiably caused their parents to seriously consider declining the RSVP. However, Elsie saw nothing wrong with an alien looking fetus curled up inside a birthday cake womb, and briefly considered having the painting shown at her gallery. There is irony in that there was no actual birthday cake present at Penelope’s party because in all the fuss about the invitations, Elise neglected to actually plan the party. The parties at the Chelsea hotel of course were never planned after all. Back then people just brought their own tamborines, liquor, and newly acquired sketchy friends with no social security numbers to let the evening play itself out.
The morning of, Elsie looked outside the window, declared it was a good day for a picnic, and promptly took her down comforter out of it’s brocade duvet which she theatrically laid on the grass outside. Penelope swung idlely on the swing set, watching her mother nervously.
By the time the kids arrived, Elsie had whipped up a mountain of pancakes, which she stacked in the center of the duvet. The pancakes range in diameter from 10 inches to 14. It was a giant-pancake-picnic-buffet! Nearby, an ancient boom box blasted the soundtrack from 2001 A Space Odyssey. All twelve kids were weirded out, but when Penelope introduced them to the litter of rats that lived inside the velvet green couch, they warmed up to all the eccentricities. Take off your shoes and sit lotus-style kids! Elsie passed out the mismatched plates.
Eww, said a girl with freckles, is this an ashtray? She held a pewter ashtray filled with strawberry jam. I dare you to stick your tongue in it Max.
Give it. He snatched it from the girl and stuck his face in it. He emerged with a slick, pink toothy smile. The kids giggled.
MAXWELL! Elsie called out.
My name is just Max, he retorted, picking strawberry seeds from his chin and flicking them at the nearby girls.
Do you know what that is? She plucked the ashtray indignantly from his hands. This is the ashtray Gala gave Salvador Dali. Do you know who that is?
A Mexican wrestler? The kids snickered at this.
No, Maximilian, Elsie replied sadly. She took the precious ashtray inside and emerged five minutes later holding a teacup of cognac.

Elsie I

Elsie Merger regularly asserts that children need to be raised in a creative environment. Elsie Merger also regularly practices questionable parenting skills. She will often serve Penelope, her daughter, English muffins with caviar for breakfast. Whenever Penelope protests, Elsie tells her that the porcelain dish with gilded imperial bees she is serving the said caviar from came from Josephine Bonaparte’s, yes, that Josephine’s trousseau, and if she doesn’t appreciate it, she could just serve it to the cats outside and go hungry until lunch, which will probably consist of another Black Sea beluga so she might as well shut up and develop a taste for it.
Elsie doesn’t need to work since her maternal grandfather, Henry Borden, made a fortune from inventing condensed milk and the Lazy Susan Table. 9 to 5 was never an option for our heroin, but she does co-own an art gallery that runs in 3 installments along a narrow alley off of Fremont’s main drag. She has carried on several numerous and sanguine affairs with various artists whose work she exhibited. Elsie wears false eyelashes and little else make up. She claims that Edie Sedgwick and her were close friends, and that someday she will write a memoir about all the crazy nights they had spent at the Chelsea hotel.