Sunday, February 24, 2008

bookstore scene on a Saturday afternoon


The Tsutaya in Roppongi Hills is loaded with art books, design books, travel books, etc., plus stacks and stacks of magazines (Esquire, U.S. edition, $18). It also has a great children's section with play area, plus a cafe and lounge, all on the same floor. Yesterday there was live entertainment, two guys playing jazz (the dude on acoustic guitar is obscured from view), and D was into it. That's him sitting on the floor...
We left the place with a bag full of books: the hefty Lonely Planet guide to Japan, the much slimmer Must-See in Kyoto, and for the coffee table, Japan: A Pictorial Portrait. We also picked up The Rough Guide's pocket-size Japanese phrasebook, which offers a handy list of colloquialisms, e.g., subarashi! (fantastic!), chotto! (hey!), uso! (that's a lie!) and baka! (you fool!). Chikusho-o (emphasis on the u, long o sound at the end) literally means "beast," but is used as a swear word, along the lines of "damn" or "hell." 

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