amadana!


today we walked to shimbashi and had some soup soba with tempura before taking the train to roppongi hills where we walked past tokyo midtown to the toto office where there was an exihibition by tadao ando about his works. we stopped at a police station on the way to ask for directions, expecting poor english but he surprised us when he asked us back, if we could speak english. haha. at toto the tadao ando exhibition was great - they actually did a one to one scale model of one of his earlier house projects- a row house in sumiyoshi, and used the rooms as the exhibits. they did the external courtyard space's concrete surfaces in plywood and made holes in them to stimulate the concrete surface. tadao ando's really poetic - even in his massive projects there is so much poetry and depth - his abu dhabi marine centre project that is being built was awesome. i think i'm going to buy one of his books when i get back home - when you read the ideas and inspirations behind the architecture, it is really inspiring and refreshing.

we separated from mf and sl and walked back down to tokyo midtown which is a huge development of offices and uppity shops - but on the top floor there were many design shops which sold interesting things - my favourite was the the idee shop parc which had a wonderful cafe with an outdoors terrace overlooking one of the midtown covered atriums. they had beautiful chairs and their planters were so cute. we were lured by the smells and shared a waffle and had some hot drinks. the japanese are amazing. the waitress came over and gave us a wool blanket each to cover our laps (some others had too) because it was outdoors so it was a little chilly. she replaced our water with new glasses without us asking. the service in tokyo is impeccable. it was very nice to sit there even though it was a little chilly, most people preferred to sit outside. the shop itself sold so many nice little things.

there was dean and deluca in the basement as well as a muji and a lot of uppity cafes. we walked out to the streets and towards the national art centre a few minutes away across the road, with the intention of looking at the architecture and hedading straight for the museum shop, which is always a great place to source for nice things. we had no care about being shallow - there's so much to explore in the streets in one week in tokyo we have no time for art.

today was quite sunny so we didn't bring too many layers - the weather forecast in the newspaper is pretty accurate. we walked to roppongi hills but i was a little disappointed it was mainly shops, high end ones, so we went back to roppongi station and took the hibiya line back to ginza where we checked out the sony building and also bought, a toaster! yes a very beautiful toaster endorsed by tyler brule.

we went back to the hotel to dump out things and crossed the road to a restaurant we had made reservations at yesterday to have dinner - many things at reasonable prices. we had toriyaki, pork yaki, dunno what that's really called, fried chicken, the thinnest pizza ever with cheese and tomatoes, a very delicious vegetable and chicken soup, grilled hotate....it was all delicious. loved the pizza and the soup, very very good stuff.

later we walked all over the small streets of shimbashi and marvelled at the millions of eateries before going to the supermarket to buy water and gifts to bring back home.

i wonder what's tomorrow's plans. most of them went to hakone today to the hot springs.