Jonelle Patrick's Blog, page 59

Electro-Shock Face Art

I saw this video by Daito Manabe at the Tokyo Art Fair today: thirty-six electrode-wired faces twitched in time to a modernistic percussion soundtrack. It was a symphony of facial tics, orchestrated in such a way that each face was “played” like an instrument, with whole sections grimacing and blinking in counterpoint. I kind of hate to admit it, but it was totally mesmerizing. I don’t think any faces were actually harmed in the making of this video, because at the end, they all sort of cracked up with the same kind of weird relief you have after stumbling off an especially hair-raising roller coaster ride.

Jonelle Patrick is the author of the Only In Tokyo mystery series, published by Penguin/Intermix. Being friends with artist Daito Manabe might be a bit hair-rasing – here is a video he made, testing the technique on his friends (electric stimulus to face – test4) before he made the piece I saw at Tokyo Art Fair. 

Electro-Shock Face Art WAT

I saw this video by Daito Manabe at the Tokyo Art Fair today: thirty-six electrode-wired faces twitched in time to a modernistic percussion soundtrack. It was a symphony of facial tics, orchestrated in such a way that each face was “played” like an instrument, with whole sections grimacing and blinking in counterpoint. I kind of hate to admit it, but it was totally mesmerizing. I don’t think any faces were actually harmed in the making of this video, because at the end, they all sort of cracked up with the same kind of weird relief you have after stumbling off an especially hair-raising roller coaster ride.

Jonelle Patrick is the author of the Only In Tokyo mystery series, published by Penguin/Intermix. Being friends with artist Daito Manabe might be a bit hair-rasing – here is a video he made, testing the technique on his friends (electric stimulus to face – test4) before he made the piece I saw at Tokyo Art Fair. 

Where To Get The Best Cup Of Coffee In The Whole World

Best. Coffee. In. The. World. You’re lookin’ at it.

Let me ask you this: how often can you get something that’s the best in the world for less than ten bucks? Because today – score! – I had the BEST COFFEE IN THE WORLD for ¥700.

It was at a little timeslip of a coffee bar in Ginza called the Café Bechet.

Naturally – this seems to be a requirement for Best In The World – it’s not easy to find. Tucked away from the street on the ground floor of a narrow building near Ginza Ichome station, I almost missed it. It didn’t look like a coffee shop – more like a bar. Dark inside, even in the middle of the day. But the second I walked through the door, I was immersed in the pre-war clarinet jazz of Sidney Bechet and the mingling aromas of coffee and cigarettes,* and was transported back in time to that grainy newsreel-ish, pre-war age.

Behind the long, polished, wooden bar is where the serious coffee brewing took place. Each cup is ground and made to order, and mine took nearly five minutes to prepare. The wait was fun, though, because it was so interesting to watch.

Magical coffeepots of yore.

After I ordered, my coffee was precisely measured out bean by bean in a balance scale, then tossed into the grinder. The perfectly pulverized results were transferred into a sort of sock-on-a-hoop, then the lady behind the counter began to juggle the four long-spouted copper water pots simmering near the end of the bar.

How do I love thee? Let me count the roasts!

The water in one is kept at the perfect temperature for cup warming – she filled my flowered china cup to the brim before attending to the actual brewing. Lifting one of the other pots high above the coffee sock, she drizzled the hot water over the waiting grounds in a stream so thin, it took over four minutes to fill the little copper pot that she briefly warmed again over the flame before pouring the elixir of caffeine into my waiting cup.

Daily roasting happens here.

I’m not a huge coffee snob, but I think a delicious cup of French Roast is truly sublime. This one really was the best I’ve ever tasted, anywhere in the world.

* In keeping with the pre-war atmosphere, smoking is allowed. If you’re a tobacco militant, you should avoid this place and settle for the second best coffee in the world.

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Café Bechet is on the ground floor of the third building from the corner (“Tohma Building” is written above the entrance). 2-2-19 Ginza, Chuo-ku

Jonelle Patrick is the author of the Only In Tokyo mystery series, published by Penguin/Intermix.

How Underwhelming Can You Get?

Tokyo SkyTree. You can’t miss it. It’s that gigantic over-hyped TV tower rearing its unremarkable, yet insistently lit-up head out beyond Asakusa. For twenty bucks you can go up it and see the view. Except today. Today all I could see was, well, this.

The most expensive clouds I have ever seen.

Fortunately for us view-challenged types, every vista is equipped with massive photo touchscreens that have a quasi-nifty interactive feature that lets you point your finger anywhere and move around a magnified and/or night view of what would be right outside the window if only there weren’t so many damn clouds in the way.

Okay, have to admit, this slightly made up for the lack of actual view.

I imagine that the twenty-buck view itself might be slightly better than the nine-buck one at Tokyo Tower, but mostly because if you’re standing inside the SkyTree, you aren’t looking at it.

The view from Tokyo Tower, with SkyTree poking up underwhelmingly in the background.

Urban view tower smackdown: This? or…

…this? (I’d kinda like to say, NO CONTEST. heh.)

Jonelle Patrick is the author of the Only In Tokyo mystery series, published by Penguin/Intermix.

DragonballZ: The Hair Wax

You know you’ve been waiting for it: now there’s a product that claims to give you amazing anime-tastic hair exactly like the characters in DragonballZ.

And as long as anime celebrities are endorsing hair products…

What DOES Tintin use to keep his hair ever-perky in the face of billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles and bashi-bazouks?

Not that anyone could improve on Crisco, but…

Jonelle Patrick is the author of the Only In Tokyo mystery series, published by Penguin/Intermix. Calvin & Hobbes is of course drawn by Bill Waterson, and Tintin is the creation of Hergé.

 

 

Once Again, Plum Blossoms Do Not Disappoint

It’s not that I don’t like cherry blossom season, I just like plum season better. (Okay, azalea season too. But that’s not ’til the end of April.) In case I haven’t convinced you yet, here are a few more…

I saw these lovelies at Gotokuji Temple

The Koshikawa-Korakuen garden is where I spotted this one.

And these are from a garden in Umegaoka, where there are 600 trees, all in bloom right now.

Jonelle Patrick is the author of the Only In Tokyo mystery series, published by Penguin/Intermix. Last year’s plum blossom-o-rama here!

Beer Engineering

Better than a cherry on top.

Three to seven. That’s the ideal ratio of foamy head to actual beer, according to the experts at the Ebisu Brewery. And how do you achieve this perfect glass of brewski? Well, first, you have to be drinking Ebisu, which is engineered to deliver that perfect ratio, every time. But if you’re a bartender drawing up draft quaffers by the dozen, you fill a glass, lop off the top of the foam with a knife (to get rid of the big bubbles on top), let it settle for a minute, then top it up. If you don’t have to keep up with thirsty hordes – and you’re not in possession of a dedicated sonic beer foamer – you make a first pour (mostly foam), let it subside for a minute or two, top it up, let it settle, then finish it off with a slow pour so the final head is nice and creamy, instead of bubbly.

I picked up this essential life-hack at the Ebisu Garden Place Beer Museum tour, which is about twenty minutes of history, and twenty minutes of beer pouring instruction and tasting. (Two generous glasses of beer plus the tour for about $5.00 – total bargain!)

Tour + two beers + snack for ¥500!

If you don’t have time for the tour (or don’t speak Japanese), you can go straight to the café and order up draft samples of all the beers Ebisu makes. They also have food (sausages, naturally) and a gift store, for killer souvenir shopping.

Jonelle Patrick is the author of the Only In Tokyo mystery series, published by Penguin/Intermix.

Magic Mood Cushion

“This light up cushion will warm your heart extremely.

Please enjoy this magic mood for your precious life.

We hope it will be your favorite one!”

Not sure what magic mood this cushion is supposed to deliver, but since I’ve already done my time as a petulant teenager, I might give this particular piece of fake fur-covered electronics a miss…

Jonelle Patrick is the author of the Only In Tokyo mystery series, published by Penguin/Intermix.

Emergency Funeral Tie

In case of an unscheduled Grim Reaper appearance…

Every convenience store in Japan sells clothes. Emergency clothes. Say you missed the last train home and have to prop yourself in a comic book café cubicle all night, then head straight back to the hamster wheel the next morning. Your white shirt no longer passes muster, and your underwear? Let’s not go there. Convenience store to the rescue! Snag yourself a new white shirt, a pair-plus-a-spare of choners, and some clean sox for about $35.

But that doesn’t explain THE BLACK TIES. In Japan, men always wear plain white ties to weddings and plain black ties to funerals. They don’t sell white ties at convenience stores, but they’ve always got a stock of black ones. Does suggest that having to suddenly go to a funeral is a fairly common hazard of life here? Seriously? Wow, who knew?

Jonelle Patrick is the author of the Only In Tokyo mystery series, published by Penguin/Intermix.

All About Love Hotels!

Ground Control to Major Tom: Take your protein pills and put your Trojan on!

Where I come from, the kind of hotels that charge by the hour instead of the night are ultra-shady and tend to get raided by the cops a lot. Not in Japan! In the country where most people live in quarters that are far from spacious and even further from private, love hotels aren’t just common, they’re everywhere.

As you’d expect, anyplace that has different rates for “rest” and “stay” attracts a fair share of couples who are two rings shy of wedded bliss. But they’re also used by people who go with their significant others – not only do most Japanese not have cars (making classic Paradise By The Dashboard Light action a little hard to come by), young people tend to live at home with their parents until they get married. Snogging in your Disney Princess bed in front of your stuffed animal collection with ma and pa watching sumo in the next room is, shall we say, not much of a recipe for adults-only passion.

And it’s an incredible business – a good love hotel averages a 250% occupancy rate! (Which means, of course, that they tend to sell each room an average of 2.5 times per day.) The rates are lower, of course, for a two hour rental – usually around $40 – $65. Staying overnight costs about the same as an inexpensive regular hotel ($120-$150).

Recently I walked around a couple of Tokyo’s love hotel districts, because I wanted to see some of the outrageous rooms I’d read about in Rabuhoteru: Satellite of Love, an excellent picture book I bought in Tokyo. Sadly, the fad for outrageous “theme” rooms seems to have mostly passed (although a few gems remain, if you look hard enough!) Most love hotels have been redecorated in sleek, businesslike style (but with extras like “aromatherapy” and, naturally, a larger than average naughty movie menu.)

Here are a sampling of my favorite love hotel rooms in Satellite of Love:

Grotto of spotlit, color-changing bliss

For those whose quirks include feeling like Edo-Era Big Brother is watching.

Futuristic lightshow bed, in case you crave sensory overload

With so many hotels all competing for the commerce of love, naturally some cater to…specialized interests.

And my favorite: the one papered in glow-in-the-dark bursting comets. A-yup.

Next up in the Love Hotel series of posts: Let’s Go To A Love Hotel! 

Jonelle Patrick is the author of the Only In Tokyo mystery series, published by Penguin/Intermix. All photos from the ever-entertaining Rabuhoteru: Satellite of Love, edited by Koichi Suzuki, published by Aspect Lightbox. You can get it from Amazon Japan, or have White Rabbit Express procure one and ship it to you.

Love hotels make an appearance early and often, in Nightshade, the first book in the Only In Tokyo mystery series.

Try the first few chapters!