• Out with Tsukiji, In with Toyosu and (who knew), Adachi?

    After the demise last year of one of the world’s best-loved wholesale fish markets at Tsukiji in Tokyo (and its relocation across the river to a soulless, gleaming building at Toyosu), the biggest surprise has been the continuing appeal – for tourists and locals alike — of the myriad shops and restaurants tucked in the narrow lanes that comprise Tsukiji’s old “outer market.”  The specialty shops and stalls here initially sprang up to cater to the culinary needs of wholesalers,… Read more »

  • Feeling Footloose and Bohemian in Kichijoji

    When visiting Japan from abroad, style-conscious friends frequently ask to visit the “Brooklyn” of Tokyo, hoping to find a myriad of alternative clothing boutiques and stellar dining. I always have to resist the urge to tell them there is no Brooklyn, because there’s no Manhattan nearby. Instead Tokyo is a fascinating urban sprawl with no focal center. There are instead 23 wards being “modernized” by the large corporations that operate the train stations along lines intersecting and connecting the vastness… Read more »

  • Goldfish Galore – a Dazzling Exhibition of Japan’s Favorite Ornamental Fish

    Goldfish have been a staple feature of Japanese summers since at least the Edo period (1603-1868) when wealthy merchants and samurai began to keep them in their ponds as pets. Small and easy to handle, unlike carp, to which they are related, wild goldfish are actually olive green but some turn out to be red,  orange or yellow,  due to a natural genetic mutation. People in ancient China began to selectively breed the brightly-colored and multi-patterned fish more than a thousand years… Read more »

  • “The Aesthetics of Japanese Illumination” – Contemporary Japanese Art in a Traditional Setting

    Traditional Japanese architecture is best known for its extreme minimalism, as exemplified by the austere but elegant simplicity of the classic tea house and perfected at Katsura Rikyu Imperial Villa in Kyoto, which is considered the quintessence of Japanese taste. But the Japanese architectural aesthetic is certainly not all about earthen walls, simple bamboo lattices and plain washi paper screens. At the other extreme is an aesthetic that celebrates extravagance, intricacy, even garishness, and reflects the same horror vacui, or… Read more »

  • TeamLab: Borderless at the Mori Building Digital Art Museum

    “Wander, Explore, Discover” is the invitation — or is it the challenge? — that greets visitors as they cross the threshold of the new Mori Building Digital Art Museum in Tokyo’s Odaiba district. In this brand new venture, the urban development giant Mori Building – which owns the site — has teamed up with teamLab, a tech-art collective, to create teamLab Borderless, a series of immersive art installations that aim to transcend barriers between art and technology, the physical and… Read more »

  • “Japan in Architecture” – exploring the traditions and transformations of Japanese architecture

    In its ongoing exhibition (until Sept. 17 2018) “Japan in Architecture : Genealogies of its Transformation,” the Mori Art Museum takes on a daunting task – to define the distinguishing features of Japanese architecture and illustrate their influence on the contemporary architectural scene. Curated by Fumio Nanjo, director of MAM, and his team, along with two Japanese architectural historians, the exhibition assembles a vast array of superbly-crafted models and photographs of architectural sites, from the Jomon period (14,000-300 BCE) to… Read more »

  • streamer movement

    A Mesmerising Collection of Carp Streamers at the National Art Center, Tokyo.

    Higher than the roof-tops are the koinobori The large carp is the father The smaller carp are the children They seem to be having fun swimming. Koinobori song, a popular Japanese children’s song (lyrics by Miyako Kondo) Japanese art lovers have long had a soft spot for Impressionism, which is the subject of the main exhibition at the National Art Center, Tokyo (NACT). “Impressionist Masterpieces from the E.G. Buehrle Collection,” has predictably attracted a large number of visitors eager to… Read more »

  • tofu plate

    A Tofu Education at Kamakura Atelier

    Home cooking in Tokyo is a challenge for many expats. Faced with small kitchens, unfamiliar foodstuffs, indecipherable labels, inexplicably expensive groceries, alien ovens, a culture which prioritizes eating out over entertaining at home, and a bountiful array of excellent and inexpensive restaurants, most foreigners in Japan dine out far more often than they would elsewhere. In my case, being an inexperienced and somewhat talentless cook adds to my reluctance to be adventurous in my pocket-sized Japanese kitchen. However, I also… Read more »

  • Teien Museum Re-opens with an Intriguing Exhibition, “Decoration Never Dies, Anyway”

    November marked the long-awaited re-opening of the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, where I recently had the luck of enjoying some behind-the-scenes access to the installation of a lively and challenging new exhibition, the intriguingly entitled “Decoration Never Dies, Anyway.” The exhibition, which brings together contemporary artists from around the world, has turned the museum, a private residence built in the Art Deco style of the 1930s, into a delightful journey of the unexpected, enabling visitors to explore over 60… Read more »

  • Unearthing the hidden charms of Ebisu-Nishi

    A little over a year ago my husband and I swapped the vibrant chaos of East London for the cosmopolitan tranquility of Tokyo, seeking to propel ourselves out of our comfort zone and experience life in entirely unfamiliar surroundings. Keen to have more opportunities to practice our fledgling Japanese, we decided to live slightly outside the usual expat circuit of Aoyama and Hiroo, and settled in an area formally known as Ebisu-Nishi, nestled between Ebisu and Daikanyama stations. The wider area is framed by the… Read more »

  • Edo Kiriko – a Cutting Edge Experience

    For centuries, Japanese craftsmen have, with a mix of remarkable dexterity, a keen eye for detail and a finely honed aesthetic sensibility, transformed all manner of material into works of art, in the form of pottery, textiles, basketry and even glass. While it takes countless years of dedicated practice to achieve even a moderate level of success in any type of craft, it is possible these days to find studios all over Japan where complete novices can try their hand… Read more »

  • woman in snow

    Bijinga – The World of Shoen Uemura’s Beautiful Women

    Whenever I host foreign visitors in Tokyo, they invariably comment on the meticulous appearance of Japanese women. Depending on their viewpoint, my friends see this adherence to a particularly Japanese idea of beauty – elegant, modest, and feminine – as (usually) something admirable and aspirational, or (occasionally), evidence of a patriarchal society in which women are encouraged to conform to a tightly-defined aesthetic standard. Regardless of whether you think a focus on appearance is liberating or restricting for women, I… Read more »