This is one of a series of “installations” created by IKEA along a tree-lined boulevard that leads to the Outer Gardens of Meiji Jingu near Gaienmae subway station. Called “IKEA 4.5 Museum,” basically each box (there are 14 of them) presents a 4.5-mat tatami room and shows various ways you could decorate it with a notice displayed outside showing how much the items will cost at IKEA’s new store (I’d like to know how much this advertising is costing them!). The room pictured above is called the “Wild Animal Room.”

The new store — their first in Japan — opens April 24th in Chiba (at the location where that SSAWS indoor ski slope used to be). Naoko and I are big IKEA fans (I’m not ashamed to admit that practically my whole San Francisco apartment was from IKEA at one point), and we’ve both been following the progress of their long-overdue appearance in Japan. Most shopping outside of books and cameras leaves me bored to tears, but for some reason I do enjoy furniture and home decorating shopping. And with Costco nearby at Makuhari, we’ll now be able to kill two super-shopping birds with one car trip.

Tokyo Museums – Grutt Pass 2004 (Japanese site here)

The “Grutt” pass in a nutshell is this: for ¥2,000 ($18USD), you get a booklet with free entrance coupons to 44 different art and history museums in the greater Tokyo area, as well as to zoos and aquariums. The entrance coupons are valid for two months from the date of your first use. This is one of those deals that’s so good you swear there’s some catch, or some fine print detail you’ve overlooked.

Naoko told me about this a while ago but I never followed through, and now I’m realizing the error of my ways. I finally bought one when we took Kaika to the Ueno Zoo last weekend (¥600 entry), and while I’ve only used it twice so far (for the zoo and for the Bridgestone (¥700)), I really only need to visit two or three more museums for the coupon booklet to have saved me money.

The list of participating institutions can be found here (in English). As I look over the list, I realize now that for many of them, the coupon will not only get me into the museum for free (eg. to see the Permanent collection), but also to Special Exhibitions. Can you see the yen savings I’m seeing in my head?

One of the nice things about this, as I discovered the other day at the Bridgestone, is that it helps to alleviate the feeling that one must see everything on display, lest one waste that sometimes hefty entrance fee. It gives one the mindset that the entrance was basically free, and lets one relax and see what one feels enough, reducing visual overload. Granted, there is a slight pressure to use the booklet, and to schedule museum visits regularly where one might not have before, but I tend to look at that as incentive rather than pressure, and I’m quite looking forward to taking in some of the more off-the-beaten path museums in the next two months. And when the two months are over, I’ll just buy another booklet. It really is a win-win as far as I can see it.

Whether you’re in town for a week or live here, this is a great deal. You can buy the pass booklet at any of the participating institutions (and use it right there and then), or at Lawson’s convenience stores, Ticket Pia, JTB offices, and a few other places. The program will run to January 31st, 2005, though as the program was done in 2003 one hopes it will continue next year as well.

Old style toy shop, Nippori, Tokyo, April 17, 2004. Bessa-L, CV 21mm f/4, Fuji Neopan 1600. Click for additional images.

Last weekend we went to see something that in a short time will be no more: the last remaining vestiges of the once thriving Dagashiya Yokochou (literally “Mom and Pop Candy Store Alley”) in Nippori, near Ueno. At its height in the Showa 30′s (1956-66), the candy and toy stores in this area numbered around 120, but now just 7 stores remain, and in a short time, these too will go, as the area to the east of Nippori station awaits the wrecking balls that will precede imminent redevelopment.

The area became one of three main “sweets and toys” districts to spring up after World War II, when sugar was rationed under the U.S. occupation and enterprising black marketers, led by the Japanese mafia or yakuza, set up shops catering to the sweet tooths of a populace sloughing off the bad taste of war and destruction. The largest of these, Ameyoko in Ueno, which numbered some 300 candy and toy stores in its heyday, still thrives today though in a much different guise. (The third was in Kinshicho, out past Ryogoku in Sumida Ward.)

If you want to see the alley, and it is just that, a narrow 2 meter-wide alley, you’ll need to hurry. The wrecking balls are slated to lower their boom sometime in June.

Click on the above image to get to a few more photos from last weekend. Photos from others, as well as more information and background on Dagashiya Yokochou, can be found at these sites (in Japanese only):
http://www.maboroshi-ch.com/rep/inq_05.htm
http://gendai.net/woman/contents.asp?c=064&id=173
http://www.mixpink.com/spot_folder/nippori_folder/nippori.html
http://www.hey.ne.jp/~kaleido/…/kalaido_topics03.htm
http://www.shitamachi.net/wa/totteoki/020616.htm

It being Christmas and all, here’s a shoping-related post for the “Japan doesn’t have to be all that expensive” file. Yesterday I bought 39 rolls of the above-pictured Konica Centuria Super color negative film, all of them 36-exposure rolls, and all of them in-date, some not expiring until as far off as 05/2005. The outlay? ¥30 each, or ¥1170 total (at today’s exchange rate, that works out to $10.91, or $.28 cents/roll).

Just to crunch the numbers some more, for kicks let’s look at how much money I potentially saved with this purchase. I bought 36 rolls of 200 ASA film; 1 roll of 400 ASA film; and 2 rolls of 800 ASA film. Altogether, this film would have cost ¥19,560 at Bic Camera, one of the big camera/electronics superstores in Japan. So I saved a theoretical ¥18,390, or $171. Or looked at another way, the 2 rolls of 800 ASA film would have cost ¥190 more than all 39 rolls did. Granted this is all fanciful digit-pushing on my part, as it’s extremely unlikely I would ever buy 39 rolls of consumer-grade color negative at one time (in case you haven’t noticed, color is not run through my cameras that often these days), and even if I did it’s unlikely it would be this Konica stuff. But who’s to complain? I basically have my oyabaka Kaika film needs met well into 2004, and who knows, I might actually find uses for the stuff past baby pictures.

So where exactly did I buy this film? Heh, I’ll tell you after I go back there tomorrow to buy the remaining rolls I was dumb enough not to buy yesterday.

My brother Kimo is in town from L.A. with his friend Ryk, who’s apparently a big star in the hardcore silver jewelry business, and who has just opened a showroom dedicated to his designs, called Starling Gear, in trendy Tokyo neighborhood Daikanyama. I wrote earlier that I thought my brother was tagging along as “official photographer” to document the store’s opening, but it turns out that my brother actually designed the lighting for the store, and some of his photographs (of Ryk’s jewelry work) feature in the store’s decor. Before my brother became a freelance photographer and assistant to Ryk, he worked in Hollywood as a lighting best boy and grip, including a five-year plus stint on NYPD Blue.

There was a party last night to celebrate the opening of the store, and as luck would have it I had the evening off due to a schedule change, so I went down to the party with a couple of friends. The photos in the composite above were taken with my mobile phone (it was fun showing it off to folks for whom the concept of a camera-embedded mobile phone is still a “wow” novelty — my brother was particularly impressed when I was moblogging from the party). I also took my “proper” digital and snapped a few more shots (see below or click the above composite), though in between catching up on things with Kimo and being introduced to way too many people, I neglected to get a shot of Ryk, nor really any shots of the merchandise, which was impressive, even though it wasn’t quite my style. Perhaps most impressive however, were the prices of some of the pieces: 28,000 yen ($235) for some chopsticks (this was probably the cheapest item in the place), 500,000 yen ($4,200) for a silver walking stick/staff sort of thing, and 980,000 ($8,235) for a table made from a chrome car wheel (rim).

My friend K-san, who couldn’t stop telling my brother he was kakkou ii (“cool”), told me later that these prices were probably less than what other manufacturers are selling their goods at, and that at any rate Ryk shouldn’t have a problem selling his stuff. This kind of hardcore jewelry is very popular here, led by a company called Chrome Hearts (do a search for “chrome hearts” on Google and you’ll get pages and pages of Japanese sites related to this brand’s jewelry). Apparently, Ryk at one time apprenticed for the guy who started Chrome Hearts.

(Click on the above composite to see a few more photos from last night’s party).

This is a detailed shot of a drink vending machine on a train station platform. I don’t know why exactly, but I find this combination of colors and imagery so potent, so irresistable, so effective. The marketing and creative boys did good on this one I think. Even though it was probably around 10ºC (50ºF) there on the platform, looking at this machine I started to feel the perverse desire for it to be one of Japan’s patented hot-and-humid summer days!

This type of open-cup vending machine is fast fading in the U.S. (I can’t even remember the last time I saw one), but is quite common here. In addition to juices, there’s the requisite machines dispensing coffee, and even machines serving up soups and such. Here we have meron (melon) and buruuberii (blueberry) drinks to choose from, available in either medium or large sizes. (The text in the blue circles at the top says “You can choose your cup size” just in case it wasn’t already apparent). The text for the blueberry drink touts me ni yasashii (“good for the eyes”), and adds that the drink contains anthocyanin and Vitamin C.

I had no idea, but studies abound about the benefits of berries like bilberries and blueberries to one’s health, especially one’s eyesight. (One such study, in Japanese, can be found here in pdf. format). In Japan in the late 90′s, there was a veritable “blueberry boom,” and a lot of blueberry products were introduced into the Japanese market. I suppose a “Hello Kitty” blueberry dessert was inevitable, but blueberry pizza or blueberry curry?

Once again, I intended to go out taking photos and ended up shopping instead. This time it was Kinokuniya‘s Foreign Book Sale which was held this past weekend in the Shinjuku Takashimaya department store. About two-and-a-half hours after getting there, I was loaded down with books, less loaded with cash than I was before, and hungry and not in the mood for pictures.

Nevertheless, like last week’s sojourn to a suburban 100-yen shop, I did notch yet another ii kaimono (“good shopping”) experience. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much, a few remaindered titles by authors I had no interest in reading, you know, Anne Rice or John Grisham books or the like. However, I was pleasantly surprised, and frankly, at least in terms of fiction, the “good” books outnumbered the mass-market paperbacks (all in my humble opinion, of course). And though I ended up spending more money than I wanted to, I took solace in the fact that I saved a bundle doing so. Here’s what I bought:

Norwegian Wood (special edition), by Haruki Murakami
A Wild Sheep Chase, by Haruki Murakami
The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi & Arrowroot, by Junichirou Tanizaki
The Key, by Junichirou Tanizaki
Runaway Horses, by Yukio Mishima
Shipwrecks, by Akira Yoshimura
Five by Endo, by Shusaku Endo
When the Emperor was Divine, by Julie Otsuka
Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan
Speed Tribes, by Karl-Taro Greenfield
The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett
Pagan Babies, by Elmore Leonard
Get Shorty, by Elmore Leonard
The Music of Chance, by Paul Auster
Eyewitness Travel Guide Japan (2001)

I was particularly happy to discover that there were some Japanese-authored fiction among the offerings, and regret a little not picking up more than I did. Though I’m non-plussed on Haruki Murakami, on the basis of one novel (Sputnik Sweetheart) and comments from folks whose opinions I respect, it was hard to pass up the special edition of Norwegian Wood, published by the UK’s Harvill Press, which presents the work in its original red and green two-volume format. Especially hard when it was only ¥700, compared to its original sticker price of ¥3200 (£15.00 in the UK).

The whole experience was like that, constantly doing mental calculations in my head as to how much I was saving, which was probably my way of justifying what I did spend. In point of fact, having to content myself for now with reading Japanese literature in translation, if I want these books while living in Japan I’m relegated to having to buy these books at import-enhanced prices, or ordering them from Amazon which after international shipping costs, comes to the same thing. In furtherance of my rationalizating, when I got home I popped in the titles and prices into an Excel spreadsheet:

The upshot of my calculations was that I spent exactly ¥10,000 for the above-listed 15 titles, which works out to ¥666 ($5.64) average per title cost. Compared with the books’ sticker prices, I saved ¥19,096 (or roughly $161). If I had bought the books new in the countries they originally came from (either the US or UK), my ¥10,000 still ended up being ¥12,797 less than what I would have spent. (Of course, if I was still living in the States, I wouldn’t have bought this many books at one time, nor would I have bought them new).

I’m not exactly sure why Kinokuniya was selling off so many good books at bargain prices (I passed up a few wonderful coffee table photo/art books in the ¥1000 – ¥2000 range, which I now regret), nor if this sale is a regular occurrence. Interestingly, after I finished at the sale I went over to one of the Kinokuniya branch stores nearby (trying in vain to find one of Natsuki Ikezawa’s two books translated into English), and sitting on the shelves of their foreign books section were some of the same books, in the same editions, that I had just bought, with no mark-down of course.

As is my wont at these types of book sales (the annual San Francisco Friends of the Library book sale at Fort Mason was always something I looked forward to), my eyes are always much larger than my actual capacity to read all of my purchases, and though I tell myself that this time it’ll be different, I won’t at all be surprised if some of these books remain unread 10 years from now. (At least, unread my me. Who knows what future generations of Easterwoods will make of them? Speaking of which, I did buy a few children’s books at the sale as well.)

With 10 out of the 15 titles Japanese works or Japan-related, what should I have selected for my first read? Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man!

The resemblance isn’t particularly striking, so I’ll alert you to the fact that this is supposed to be Ronald Reagan, circa the days he was public enemy number one in my book. I mentioned yesterday that on the way to Kazo, we got sidetracked by the sight of a huge 100-yen shop, and ended up spending close to an hour (and 3,000 yen) inside. Well, this was one of the things I came away with. I wasn’t really in need of a Ronald Reagan mask, of course. (Nor was I in need of most of what I bought yesterday, but it’s hard to exert self-control when everything is only 100 yen each.) However, it occurred to me that it would allow me to show you, dear reader, the type of thing one can buy in these stores for just a single 100-yen coin (about $.83 US cents), and you know I spare no expense for you. Actually, there were four masks altogether for me to choose from. In addition to the Reagan mask, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Nixon visages were also available. It looked like a modern day Mt. Rushmore. (Sadly, the one which presumably would be in greatest demand right about now, that of current public enemy number one Bush Jr., was not in stock or has yet to be manufactured).

Interestingly, the label for these all feature the image of Reagan (looking decidedly more like Reagan than the mask does). It did strike me as a bit weird that in a distant suburban bottom-yen discount store in Japan, they would be selling party masks for 4 former U.S. presidents. (In fact, with the exception of a plastic Edo-era chonmage wig similar to this one, these were the only masks or costume accessories available.) Why not a Junichiro Koizumi mask? Or perhaps even more appropriate for this part of the world, a Kim Jong Il mask?

My mother-in-law (and my wife for that matter) loves to throw out the Japanese word mottainai, which Iwanami Shoten’s Kojien defines as “A regrettable situation in which something is wasted without its value being fully utilized.” This is actually one of those Japanese words (or perhaps more accurately, concepts) that I hear at least once a day. (Another is shoganai — roughly “it can’t be helped”). So if I suggest that the bathtub cover should be replaced because it’s actually broken (yes, they have bathtub covers in Japan so the hot water doesn’t go cold in between family members’ baths), my suggestion is met by “mottainai” by my mother-in-law (never mind that a new bathtub cover can be bought for around 750 yen, or about $6 USD and some change).

Now, I’m pretty much on board with the concept of mottainai (and to prove it you should know that as I type this I’m sitting here in bundles and bundles of clothes and blankets, wearing a muffler around my neck, and can see my breath when I exhale, all in an effort to save on electricity costs!). But sometimes, I think some Japanese view it all too obsessively, and tend to lose perspective (witness my previous post about family finances and my wife’s efforts — for naught — to save 20 yen on a bottle of honey).

At any rate, recently my mother-in-law had the opportunity to put her money where her mouth is, so to speak. Obviously, with the baby due in a little over 3 months time, there are some things that we need to buy (some things, hah! a lot of things!), including a baby crib and a stroller. These items don’t run cheap in Japan, but our local department store (the same store I got my $70 wool suits a couple of months back) has a sale on at the moment, with a baby crib running 10,000 yen ($80), with another 10,000 yen for the bedding to go along with it. Naoko and my mother-in-law were all hot to trot. Kaou? Kaou? (Should we buy?) But I put a damper on their bargain shopping love-fest when I suggested, “What about all the recycle shops in the area? Surely there must be some cribs in those places, considering that a crib is not something you need to keep around the house forever.”

“Dame jaan (that’s no good),” said my mother-in-law. “The baby should have new things. You can’t buy a crib at the recycle (second-hand) shop. Kitanai yo (It’s dirty)!” My response? You can probably guess it: “A new 10,000 yen crib is mottainai.” She did not like this answer. And I fully admit that internally I was doing a little dance and shouting “touche”. But beyond gleefully catching my mother-in-law in a trap, I was serious. Why spend a lot of money on something that we’re going to use for a couple of years (and perhaps twice, if we’re foolhardy enough to have a second child after this one)? As long as it’s not in danger of falling apart, why not buy one of these at a recylcle shop if we can find one. I have been to the recycle shops in this area on more than a few occassions, and I can tell you one thing, there are some serious bargains to be had, especially on furniture. Just the other day I was in one, and saw a brand new wardrobe, beautiful looking, huge, and sturdier than anything in Ikea’s dreams. Price tag?: 4,000 yen (about $32 US).

And buying secondhand would be symbolic as well. I see it as helping the child start off on the right foot, so to speak, even though he/she will be clueless that they’re sleeping in a recycled crib. To me, there’s nothing wrong with buying from secondhand stores, in fact I see it as the opposite. And I want my child to feel the same.

You see, I feel strongly about this because after my parents divorced when I was 11 years old, with alimony payments and what not there wasn’t a lot of money to go around (we lived with my father). My brother and I both had paper routes, and with the money we made from this we were expected to pretty much pay for our existence, save for food and shelter. And so all of our clothes were bought at swap meets, or from the Goodwill or Salvation Army stores. In fact, I don’t think I bought a brand new item of clothing until I was in my lates teens, when vanity and the search for girlfriends impelled me to upgrade my wardrobe. It wasn’t just clothes. On the rare occassion that we went out for dinner, we always made sure we ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, not because of pressure from my father but because we ourselves felt that as a family, we couldn’t afford it. (My favorite story from this period was when my brother Kimo and I were visiting my grandparents in Houston, and my brother accompanied my grandmother to the doughnut store as she needed to buy some doughnuts for a church function. My grandmother asked Kimo — who was around 13 years old at the time — if he wanted a doughnut, but he declined, saying it cost too much money — probably only .40 cents or so. The shop clerk was so taken with my brother’s refusal to have money spent on him that she gave my brother a free doughnut).

And so yesterday, Naoko and I went to a secondhand store specifically for children’s stuff in Urawa, working off a tip from one of Naoko’s co-workers. Hah hah hah, I think I just found my new favorite store! Car seats, tons of childrens clothes, bibs and diaper stuff, strollers, children’s books and toys, they seemingly had it all, at fabulous prices. And yes, they had a crib, in very good condition, with exactly what Naoko required (storage space underneath the bed, can convert to a changing table, has casters so we can wheel it around). Price tag?: 2,980 yen ($24 USD). Hmmn, let’s see….that’s a savings of 7,000 yen, or $55 USD, from the on-sale department store model. (You can see a fair approximation of what we bought via this item at Amazon, which is selling for $99.) Did we buy it? You bet your bottom dollar we did. The look on my mother-in-law’s face when we brought it into the house was bemused, but the look on her face when we told her how much it had cost was priceless.

However, I’m not sure she’s fully with the program yet. We also bought a backpack for carrying all those baby accessories, you know, bottles of milk, diapers, toys, a brand new backpack which was only 298 yen (original price 3,000 yen). Rather that being impressed that we paid ten times less than the original price, my mother-in-law seemed most pleased with the fact that it was new, and in it’s original packaging. “Atarashii wa ii desu ne,” she kept saying (new is good, isn’t it?). Ah, but the point had been made, and I couldn’t help but feel very satisfied that our first big purchase for the child (of MANY to come) was such an ii kaimono (“smart shopping”) experience, and to my mind, fully in step with the concept of mottainai.

Tokyo is often touted as the most expensive city in the world. A survey released a few months ago confirmed this, though what got lost in the headlines was that this particular survey was based on the cost of living of “a business executive and family sent overseas”. Hmmn, can we say “expense account”?

At any rate, whether for business executives or just your average joe, no doubt Tokyo (and Japan as a whole) is expensive to live in. But I’m here to tell you that it is far from prohibitively expensive, and indeed, for many things, my previous home of San Francisco has Tokyo beat hands down in this respect.

To wit, today I bought two “winter” suits, to replace the thin and practically see-through summer suit I’ve been wearing. So for a pair of pants together with a suit jacket, how much did we spend? 9,000-yen each, which at today’s exchange rate comes to $74 USD per suit. Mind you, we’re not talking Armani here, but we are talking about two perfectly suitable wool suits in my size (this last point should not go underestimated!). To top it off, I bought three long-sleeve dress shirts, at the extremely reasonable price of 880-yen each ($7.21 USD per shirt).

This is one example upon many I could give you that living in Tokyo doesn’t have to break the bank, provided you are a smart and disciplined shopper, willing to wait for the item to go on sale or to check if another store has it cheaper, sign up for any and every “point card” thrust your way, and aware of Japan’s gift to yen-pinching folk like us, the 100-yen store and one’s local “recycle” (read: Goodwill) shop.

Now, I have to give credit where credit is due, and thank Naoko for a) spotting the suit sale from among the newspaper inserts that she scans daily, and b) pushing and prodding me to make the dreaded trip over to the department store to actually try on the suits. This is why I’m not ashamed to admit that we are a very traditional Japanese couple in this respect: I earn most of the money, but she controls all of it! She’s extremely good at yen-pinching, and very disciplined about it. Me, I’m too lazy, and not nearly disciplined enough.

Sometimes her spendthrift ways go over the top and I get irked, like when she makes a 20-yen cellphone call from the store to her mother to check if the price of a jar of honey is cheaper there than at another store. (Says I: “Well, now that you’ve just spent 20-yen on the phone call, it ain’t cheaper anymore!”) But most of the time I just marvel at her penchant for finding great deals and saving us in the long run a boat load of money. Now that we’re really shopping and saving for three of us, I appreciate her efforts even more.

Admittedly, there are plenty of areas in which Tokyo is ridiculously expensive, especially with respect to entertainment, eg. books, cd’s and dvd’s, a night out on the town, or a rock concert. A case in point: tonight I went to see the British band Oasis in concert. For roughly $61 USD, I had the privilege of sitting at the top of the near 15,000-seat capacity Yoyogi National Stadium (and this after buying the more expensive ticket; one wonders where the cheaper seats were) with horrendous acoustics for an hour-and-half show (no opening act either). I won’t be doing that again anytime soon, I can assure you.