Tokyo Diary- Lost in Shibuya, Wandering Harajuku, Kawaii!!!!

Look  at this tree in  the http://www.df-cafe.com/.

Sushi flavored pringles and other adventures; Tokyo is blowing my mind!!! — at デザインフェスタギャラリー Design Festa Gallery

Caroline sees Berger ... as she looks ...and we make our way to Tokyo. The little one refuses to join the selfie. C u in a month USA! — at Newark Int'l-Terminal C Arrivals.

Scenes  from some of my favorite movies.

Hiroshima  Mon Amour, Seven  Samurai,  and  Godzilla.

Somehow Tokyo feels familiar.

“Japan’s postwar development has had  a  disastrous impact  on the natural environment,” laments  Yamashita Hirofumi,  one of Japan’s leading  activists.

Is any of this  sustainable, he wonders, 

We wonder.

There’s been a lot of traveling the last few years. 

I think of the first day of each trip,

Of Madrid,  arriving in  Paris with my Mom,

Naples  last year.

This year.

Getting there.

Arriving.

Making  our way to the hotel or apartment.

Fighting jet lag.

The flight to Tokyo was nothing – fourteen hours, not  problem.

Getting  there on the other hand,

That was not simple. 

It took  traversing an array of personal challenges,

Kids growing.

Weariness with the road. 

Bad directions.

Tired spirits.

The subway is wonderful, people hanging  on  straps, teenagers  in  school uniforms, 

Funny adds.

There are vending machines everywhere.

Coffee, strawberry milk, so much.

The directions to our apartment are alternately in English, Japanese, and Korean.

“Its up there,” the Taxi finally says.

“I can’t drive there.”

Walking its not  up there.

Its not anywhere.

“Its around there,” says a man coming  out of a bathhouse.

“People scratch their heads.”

Finally, we wander  from house to house until we find  it. 

Melting down.

Before  we  left I watched Godzilla and Hiroshima  Mon Amour, 

the Tokyo Story, and The Seven Samurai, several  I’d seen years before as  a kid.

This is a global  culture, with a  complicated relationship to the world and itself.

What of energy?

What  of  nukes?

From Hiroshima to Godzilla to Fukushima,

No Fukushima on the  Hudson, we screamed years ago.

What will become  of us. 

We need power, nukes better than fossil fuels.

What is  modernity going to be?

Letting go of the old, finding new resources, losing, winning, becoming autonomous.

Is any of it sustainable?

Solar panels, nuclear fallout, and plastics, plastics,  plastics,

Cosplay - Lolita and school girl uniforms - creatures lurk  the streets.

Kitsch is everywhere.

So is a beautiful culture.

After  sleeping,  waking,  sleeping,  the little  one mumbling, sitting up declaring,

‘you’ve got to throw the penis!” falling back into bed,

we wake up an  its Wednesday.

We left on  Monday. 

Where  did Tuesday go?

We  meet the teenager whose been modeling.

Going  out for brunch and coffee.

I  can’t say a word.

“You can’t speak in Italian dad.”

She’s off to be a super model.

A bit of a grind.

We wonder  through Tsutaya books, stacks  of  zines,

Art books, elegant waiters in  suits, people  sipping coffee,

Art books, street art everywhere.

Everything elegant.

Its  mesmerizing.

Some call it the best  bookstore  in the world.

A pulsing culture, a homogeneous space.

Off to Shibuya Crossing, shopping, shopping, shopping.

“The  Myth of  Tomorrow,” a 30m mural depicting the atomic explosion.

How do  we  power  this monster?

You wonder everyday. 

Is any of it sustainable?

Off to Harajuku, we walk.

Adorable kids on bikes, walking in packs.

Down the Takeshita Dori alley into a dream,

Utopia of design, plastic, rows of shops, and cosplay characters, teen fashion, Gothic Lolita, Decora, Visual Kei.

“Kawaii,” she laughs when I put on a twisted orange cap.

The little one is  made for this place.

Design Fiesta for a beer off

3 Chome-20-18 Jingumae, 渋谷区 Shibuya City,

“A hidden garden cafe terrace that does not seem like Harajuku when passing through a narrow street. Because it is between the gallery and the gallery, it makes you feel as if you just got lost in another space.There are three old pomegranate trees in the courtyard in the nature attached to the art gallery, and in summer, red flowers bloom all over the garden.”

The bartender pours us beer, a juice for the little one and told us about the murals.

I ask about Cat Street.

He drew a map.

And we take in  the  lush, quirky café, with a tree meandering from the floor through a table up to the ceiling, nature and civilization, feeling in harmony somehow.

It is possible.

Is it?

Wandering home.