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About meArchives for February, 2007
A home to keep you young, or insane
If you’re into wild architecture, check out 三鷹天命反転住宅 (the “Reversible Destiny Lofts Mitaka”). I learned about this housing when my brother sent me a link to this old Newsweek story. As that article says:
Painted in eye-catching blue, pink, red, yellow and other bright colors, the building resembles the indoor playgrounds that attract toddlers at fast-food restaurants. Inside, each apartment features a dining room with a grainy, surfaced floor that slopes erratically, a sunken kitchen and a study with a concave floor. Electric switches are located in unexpected places on the walls so you have to feel around for the right one. A glass door to the veranda is so small you have to bend to crawl out. You constantly lose balance and gather yourself up, grab onto a column and occasionally trip and fall.
All of this makes the place sound not at all like something that should be advertised as “in memory of Helen Keller.” You’d think she would want a simple, regular layout around which to find her way. Still, the place does look cool, in a Dr. Seuss sort of way.
The apartment building is near my place, so I will swing by one of these days and take pictures of my own. (If you were a Bochi kid, then you’ll understand when I tell you that it’s on the six-lane, across the street from the gas station near the back gate of ICU.) Not exactly handy to the train lines, and that is one noisy road to live on . . . All this for ¥90 million? Yeah, I’ll probably pass on these units, even if one of them does belong to the Buddhist nun and author Setouchi Jakuchô. Perhaps the price doesn’t seem so high to the elderly when they consider that architect Arakawa Shûsaku promises the wildly unpredictable apartment “makes you alert and awakens instincts, so you’ll live better, longer and even forever.”
11 Top Underground Transit Systems in the World
In a list of the 11 Top Underground Transit Systems in the World, the Tokyo subway comes in fifth. I was surprised to see that it isn’t the most heavily used: this page says that 2.8 billion riders take the chikatetsu each year, compared with 3.2 billion in Moscow. (I imagine this isn’t so surprising since the JR and private surface lines handle so much of the daily traffic in this city. Moscow’s subways, by the way, are amazing; during the Cold War they were meant to double as nuclear attack shelters for the city’s population, and they are astoundingly deep as a result. I rode them in 1987 and remember being amazed by the escalators—easily the longest I have seen anywhere.)
One problem with the page linked above: two of the three photos for Tokyo show JR trains, not subways. There’s a shot of a Shinkansen rolling between Tokyo and Shinagawa and a shot of what looks like the Chuo Line, which I take every day.
(Via Kottke’s site.)
Yet another Hills book update
Masako book “selling very well” after ban, goes the article covering this development that nobody could possibly have seen coming.
The Australian author of a controversial book about Japan’s royal family said yesterday that Tokyo’s attempts to censor his work had backfired spectacularly and made it more popular than Harry Potter. . . .
Mr Hills said the furore had fuelled interest in the book, which was outselling pre-orders of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue on Amazon Japan’s English language bestseller list.
He said: “The whole strategy of the Japanese government has just completely backfired.”
Has there ever been a book* anywhere that saw sales go down after an authority figure came out against it?
* Replace with “album” or “video game” as you see fit.
Prince Pickles and Parsley-chan
The International Herald Tribune wrote a story on the mascot for Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. Read it here, or look at coverage of the coverage at Japan Probe and Japundit. My wife found this cellphone strap she received a while back from a friend in the Defense Ministry and to celebrate this whirlwind of fresh attention the prince is getting I decided to put it to good use.
Note the inclusion here of Parsley-chan, the prince’s girlfriend, who was not mentioned in the IHT piece. Shocking sexism!
The IHA strikes back
Following up on yesterday’s stuff about the Ben Hills book: The Imperial Household Agency has posted the letter it sent to Hills for all to read. (Punctuation weirdness is sic.)
In Chapter seven of this book, you write that, “The Emperor is said to have more than 1000 engagements a year,—–, though all are undemanding formal appearances at uncontroversial events.” and go on to conclude that, “It would be inconceivable for the Japanese royals to be associated with anything as controversial as Princess Diana’s championing of —– the Leprosy Mission.” Here, you completely ignore the fact that Their Majesties have been very much involved in leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, over the past forty years.
The letter goes on to talk at length about the deep involvement of the imperial couple in the leprosy issue (nine sanatorium visits over four decades, whew) and their trips to places like Okinawa and quake-stricken Kobe. Not exactly the kind of stuff that strikes me as demanding and controversial, but then again I come from a country that got rid of its king centuries ago so perhaps I lack the proper respect for royal institutions.
(I’m not at all familiar with Princess Diana’s “Leprosy Mission,” but for all I know it was just about as demanding as the various trips to facilities taken by the Japanese royals. Or did she really get out there and stump for the cause, raising money for research and whatnot?)
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