Kishimen, noodle Nagoyan style

This Kishimen noodle stand on a Shinkansen platform is known as one of the best places to taste good Kishimen. Purchase a ticket from the menue on the vending machine, and you will get a savory noodle-in-soup instantly. Enjoy the Nagoyan fast food!

Misokatsu, Nagoyan specialty fried pork

This misokatsu is so deeply dipped in miso (soybean paste). Fried pork meats are amazingly tender.

Seasonal Obento in Shinkansen

"Plum Bento", one of Obento (box lunch) selections of Shin-Yokohama Station in July. I took a bullet train from Shin-Yokohama to Nagoya to attend an international seminar. It is always fun to try a new obento menu at a JR station.

Open cafe on Omotesando

Anniversaire Cafe is quite spacious inside. They serve nice cafe au lait and croissant for breakfast. Their lunch selection is always good as well. What I like most about this cafe is I can stay there as long as I want for I usually stop by on weekday mornings.

Omotesando chic

A woman in style proudly walks on the street in front of the Omotesando Hills. Is she on her way back from her work on Tuesday evening? Please click the photo if you want to see the trendy soft skirt and spat combination this season in Tokyo.

Purifying water

Between the building and the walk, there is a little rivulet running through. Water's purifying quality is employed as if it purges impurity of mere mortal consumers. The mall, the modern site for mass consumption, turns into a sacred space like a temple by attaching water runs through alongsaide the pedestrian walk. The inside is like a sanctuary with environmentally conscious music from nature.

Omotesando Hills by Tadao Ando

One charm of the Omotesando Hills, designed by Tadao Ando & Mori Building, is its reflections of trees and natural environment on the glasses. Situating in the middle of the city, it presents a calming impression for it takes nature into the building.

Scramble Crossing, Shibuya (2)

Many, many people. . . .

I HATE this crossing and always try to avoid this crowd. How can I avoid this dreadful crossing and get around in Shibuya? -- Well, I know how to . . . ;)

Scramble Crossing, Shibuya (1)

Many people. . . .

Bunkamura, Shibuya

The first floor gallery, Bunkamura, Shibuya
Many books. . . .

Hilda and Miriam

Students in my class, young and pretty, look definitely like Hilda, the spotless dove-like white heroine in The Marble Faun. Many of them, however, detest this frail passive New England girl and prefer Miriam, the enigmatic dark heroine. They don't like the plot that the saintly dove on the Virgin's Tower ended up as the "household saint" in Kenyon's and her fireside back in New England. They say, "She never learned anything even after spending precious time overseas." The last presenter concluded that Miriam and Donatello were the couple in pursuit of truth, whereas Hilda and Kenyon were just realistic and conventional. She said the latter two never got into the domain of truth because Hilda did not admit or never committed "sin" and prevented Kenyon to think deep. If American "innocence" was one of the themes of the text, this innocence, in fact, could mean "ignorance." Two New Englanders went back to America to start a "home" leaving their artistic energies as well as a romantic idealistic pursuite of truth behind in Europe. -- What a fantastic cultural critic Hawthorne was! Was America such a prosaic place without romantic elements in his time? It probably was so at least for Hawtohrne -- it is ironic Hawthorne never was able to regain his artistic energy back to complete another work after he went back to US from Europe.

We 'll read another book on the similar theme, "Americans in Italy," The Portrait of a Lady in the fall semester. James certainly was fascinated with Hawthorne's white heroine (dove). Isabel Archer is a bookish girl and isn't afraid of looking into "blackness" in spite of her dove quality. It will be interesting to see how James develops the white heroine in his novel.

I have a wonderful group of sutdents this year in my seminar.

Ginza at night

Ginza never sleeps.　Can you count how many drinking establishments are in one building?

Tsuruya at Matsuya, Ginza

Cold sweet-bean soup as a desert at
Tusruya's kaiseki dinner (8th Floor,
Matsuya)

Fujiya, Ginza

Fujiya's Peko-chan is back in her summer outfit. She's ever young. Welcome back, Peko-chan!

Mother Teresa still speaks to us

This large panel of Mother Teresa's life is now on display on our campus.

Sweet Invitation

Guess what are these beautifully wrapped up, cozily placed plump balls? -- Yes, they are sweets. A publisher came with this package today to propose a translation project. The book is about the Early American sketches drawn by an English painter John White who accompanied Walter Raleigh (1554-1618) on his New World expedition and left many sketches of the people, flaura and fauna. The British Museum recently exhibited them and made a visually attractive book. They want me to supervise to translate the book. I happily accepted both the project and the sweets!

Miriam's pessimistic worldview in The Marble Faun

"The chasm was merely one of the orifices of that pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere. The firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm. A footstep, a little heavier than ordinary, will serve and we must step very daintily, not to break through the crust, at any moment. " (The Marble Faun, XVIII)
So Miriam says. If one's present happiness in any sort is made up with such a "thin crust," we really need to be careful to handle. You don't want your loved ones to leave you without telling you any words. -- We'll finish reading this text tomorrow in my class. Let's see how the final presentation and discussion go.

Dominique Thinot and his art works

Our artist friend stopped by on his way back from China to Paris. Dominique and Mom are posing in front of Dominique's paintings. According to him, these were painted when he was going through the dark night of a soul. Art works derived from such struggles have powerful impacts.

"Sketches of Frank Gehry"

I saw the "Sketches of Frank Gehry," a documentary film directed by Sydney Pollack at Bunkamura (Shibuya) recently. How much fun this architect must be having designing fantastically unique buildings! In March I had lunch at the Faculty Dining at M. I. T. in Cambridge, MA. I fully enjoyed being in a sunny space with nice selections of dishes. Gehry betrays ordinary expectations of proper sense of locations -- you feel you are in an open space even inside the building. What a magical space he can creat. I enjoyed the movie as well back in Tokyo.

Maison HERMES by Renzo Piano

Tokyo now is filled with post-modern architectures all over. This is one of them, Hermes flagship building in Ginza. It looks especially glorious in sunset reflecting many colors both natural and artificial.

The Marble Faun

"Sin has educated Donatello, and elevated him. Is sin, then -- which we deem such a dreadful blackness in the Universe -- is it, like Sorrow, merely an element of human education, through which we struggle to a higher and purer state than we could otherwise have attained. Did Adam fall, that we might ultimately rise to a far loftier Paradise than his?" (Hawhthorne, The Marble Faun) This is a problematic comment on the theme of the Fortunate fall stated by Kenyon, one of the four protagonists in the novel. I enjoy such discussions in this novel on romantic unions of two young couples in an Italian setting. I find the work intellectually involving.

Cherry blossoms 2007

In spring, cherry blossoms around my university become so beautiful. This is the pleasantest time in the year when new students arrive from all over the world.

Blithedale

This is the first entry to my blog "Blithedale". The blog title is from Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel. Yes, I am a big fan of Hawthorne. I added "in Tokyo" because I currently live in Tokyo, Japan. Everytime I open pages of Hawtohrne's works, there I find something worth stopping to think about. Not just stories told but thoughts he introduces are so insightful. That is why I always go back to his works. The subtitle is not from The Blithdale Romance but from "The Custom House," the introduction of The Scarlet Letter.