Friday night and time to eat. The areas around the stations are often filled with anything from fast food to holes in the walls serving up delicious Japanese food.
Can’t read the menu? Just check out the fake or plastic food which is custom tailored to the restaurant and order from there.
いただきます! Have a great weekend around the world! 
Around midnight Foodies TV (Channel 545) comes alive with popular Giada at Home. Eating with your eyes is definitely calorie free, something I desperately need at the moment. 
Although I wish I had this raspberry cake on the table, I went for something not quite in the same delicious category but still a category full of fulfillment. A salad made out of the lettuce and herbs in my urban balcony garden. To top it off, I added some feta cheese and grapes and a slight hint of extra virgin olive oil with balsamic vinegar. Yum!
“We gotta flip the script on what a gangsta is — if you ain’t a gardener, you ain’t gangsta.” (Finlay)
http://www.ted.com/talks/ron_finley_a_guerilla_gardener_in_south_ central_la.html
I watched a TED-talk with artist and fashion designer Ron Finlay presenting A guerilla gardener in South Central LA. As an artist he sees gardening as graffiti and art. Together with a group of volunteer gardeners he plants vegetable gardens in abandoned lots, traffic medians and along the curbs around South Central LA. This is done mostly to offer some alternative to fast food in the community where “the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys” but also for defiance and beauty.
I thought why not? So I have tried to spice up my own balcony, not so much with the intention of transforming my own life into a gangsta’s paradise but simply because I believe it makes sense.
I started out with beginners’ kit of lettuce, radishes, chives and various herbs. Everything you need except for water comes with the kit and it seems fool proof enough. I’m in Japan, after all. One typhoon and it goes from nothing to this. I would like to believe that what I’m doing is purely organic but who knows what rain and air pollution contribute. Still, it’s a great feeling not to have to raid traffic medians and curbs and just my own balcony. What do you think?
Ravens beware!
Today Tokyo has shown itself from the wet side, although the weather has been a bit back and forth.
With nothing in particular planned what better than to take the opportunity to get some insight into the art world? Not newly published but still ever so current, Don Thompson’s The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, The curious Economics of Contemporary Art, gives you the insight into why a New York investment banker would consider spending $12 million for a decaying, stuffed shark and how a leather jacket with silver chains attached could possibly be considered art where it’s thrown in a corner, titled No-one Ever Leaves. By the way, it sold for $690,000 at a Sotheby’s auction. We also get acquainted with auction houses, dealers and collectors.
Just think about it, if the stuffed shark had simply been named Shark would it have been as interesting as when titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, which supposedly forces the viewer to create meaning? Marketing genius. I only wish it was me. However, Hirst was not the first to display a shark. Already back in 1989, a golden hammerhead shark was displayed in E. Saunder’s JD electrical shop in Shoreditch, London. (Two years before Hirst’s.) This was followed by the same particular shark being displayed in the Stuckism International Gallery, London (2003), titled A Dead Shark Isn’t Art. Later Saunders advertised his shark for £ 1 million: “New Year Sale: Shark for only £ 1,000,000; save £5,000,000 on the Damien Hirst copy.” Needless to say, the shark didn’t sell but ignited discussions on the concept of art.
Another interesting read for a rainy day (from September 21st) is The Economist’s In praise of art forgery, The Emperor’s new pictures, Fakes say some interesting things about the economics of art.
This article mentions that “If the purchasers of great art were buying paintings only for their beauty, they would be content to display fine fakes on their walls. The fury and embarrassment caused by the exposure of a forger suggests this is not so.” What do you think? Ok to hang a fake as long as you don’t have to pay for the brand maybe?
Officially, autumn did announce its presence today. Autumnal Equinox Day is celebrated as a public holiday and marks the change of seasons. During higan, with its religious origin, people visit family graves to clean, offer flowers and food, burn incense and to pray for their ancestors.
This is also the time when you as a westerner gets all kinds of remarks, such as “Aren’t you cold?”, “Don’t you find it chilly today?” “Oh, so you’re wearing short sleeved?” “Do you like wearing black t-shirts?” Reality check and translation, you aren’t dressed as you are supposed to. No consideration is taken into that the temperature is still very much the same as when the papers in your native country write about the upcoming heat wave. For now I’ll continue to troop my black short sleeved t-shirts and if it gets cooler, I´ll go with a 3/4 sleeve.
The Koyasan Shingon temple is a branch of esoteric Mahayana Buddhism where Hindu elements are incorporated. Those might be mandalas, which are symbols representing the universe, mudra (hand gestures), the chanting of mantras and even multi-armed deities. The sect was founded in Japan in the 9th century.
This is the Henjo hall of the Tokyo branch of Koyasan temple. 
Shingon deity
Jizo is found at temples but also along roads or streets. It’s the bosatsu (guardian) of those who suffer, like sick children. Jizo also helps children who have died into the next world. 
Every-Other-Day By Anne 