It’s the day after Japan’s most disastrous earthquake and tsunami, and I’m heading down Osaka’s Animal Park arcade — a seedy, Showa-style passage with whores on one side, flophouses on the other — to neon-garish supermarket Tamade, where I’m planning to stock up on rice and other basics. With such chaos to the north and east of us, with the yen in freefall and nuclear power stations on the brink of meltdown, Japan’s food supplies may soon get scarce or dear. But on the streets of Osaka people are cheerful, smiling and laughing and chatting. It reminds me of the day after 9/11, when I went up to Central Park and found children happily sailing yachts on the pond, oblivious to the plume of smoke rising from Ground Zero. Life goes on. Life revives. Life survives, in part because it has an in-built adaptive obliviousness. Or is it just that we’re so entirely aware, all the time, that “in the midst of life we are in death, et cetera”?

Halfway to the supermarket I stop, pulled up by the sound of frenzied bongos, screeching violin and honking avant-garde saxophone. A street performer is using the pavement in front of the oden restaurant as his stage. He’s a middle-aged man wearing stockings and suspenders, his face and legs daubed in the distinctive white make-up which inscribes him in the tradition of Butoh. Draped in a banner I can’t read, he’s emerging from a gigantic vulva constructed of cans and wire. For me it’s a metaphor for Japan’s rebirth after yesterday’s disaster. Life goes on. New life emerges. A bird, a woman, a foetus, it flaps grotesquely around, here beneath the freeway flyover. The bongos beat, the violins stagger and slide, the sax quacks. People shoot photos, or simply squeeze past on bikes. After videoing for a few minutes, I continue to the lurid neon lights of the Tamade supermarket, strangely reassured. Whatever happens to it, this country — precarious yet resilient — is extraordinary. Will and brilliance can overcome, time after time, whatever risks and spills come Japan’s way. The sun also rises.

by mrstsk.

東京地震！新宿の高層ビルが揺れている！　2011年3月11日 (via escot2008) Buildings swaying in Japan today. As one YT commenter says, “Congratulations to the architects, builders and everyone else involved in the design of Japan’s infrastructure. The mere fact that the death toll isn’t in the 100Ks is a testament to their skill and knowledge.” Link via here.

Japan <3

"In Japan the fear of being led astray by an untrustworthy spirit-fox is so pervasive that a set of social conventions has arisen by which people can assure one another of their humanness. In telephone conversations such assurances are especially important, since the two parties cannot see each other and have to rely entirely on verbal codes. One convention has it that foxes cannot pronounce certain sounds in human speech, such as the phrase ‘moshi moshi,’ which has come to be the standard telephone greeting and has no real meaning beyond demonstrating that the speaker can make non-vulpine sounds. In effect, then, the greeting means ‘rest assured that you are not speaking to a spirit-fox who might trick you.’"

I typed all this out by hand I was so delighted to find it in this excellent book about foxes.

Michael Wolf’s a collection of photos of people pressed against fogged-up Tokyo subway windows via Kottke.

Shinkansen.

And here are a few photos from Tokyo - not as many as last time!

Hello Sandwich’s zine guide was a constant companion as we walked around Tokyo. We were so lucky to meet Ebony in Shimokitazawa, and get shown around her gorgeous neighbourhood! It’s the home of my new favourite shop, Darwin Room Liberal Arts Lab, which sells animal encyclopaedias, butterflies, fossils, sketching equipment, coffee, and crystals (I got a rose quartz). Sadly, the taxidermy pelican and zebra were not for sale. Having Ebony’s zine completely eliminated the need for unwieldy maps or a dorky Lonely Planet, and I can’t recommend it enough. (And thank you too to Natalie for recommending Brown Rice whole food cafe, where I went last year too, with the most beautiful lunch sets and sake.)

I love Japan.