have you seen this man?

I have, on a number of occasions. He walks with purpose, in and around Shibuya-ku. Wears this outfit in winter, spring, summer and fall. Here he is on Aoyama dori, early morning on Friday, Dec. 10, 2010

calling wardrobe

Is somebody doing a remake of Village of the Damned?

time to vacuum the duck!

insurance office, Gakugeidaigaku shopping street

My boys are too big for this

I'm always amazed to see how some of the moms with small children get around in this city....
I'm only counting four kids here, but maybe there's a 5th one we can't see.

It's nice to see the older kids are wearing helmets. Rarely do I see anybody wearing a helmet here. But those babies...somebody cover their heads!

So, Annette, we meet again...

That weird exhibition that creeped out my kids is still going on over in Roppongi Hills. I came across this advert near the entrance to the Mori tower last Tuesday, so now I can give you the visual of the bat that I described in my earlier post, about the day my kids learned that art was something to be feared. (Good job, mom.)

Anyway. Last Tuesday Terry was off while the banks closed in honor of Autumnal Equinox Day, or Shu-bun-no-hi, the midpoint of the season and a time to pray for your ancestors and visit their graves (or headstones marking the spot where the ashes are, as everybody here is cremated). The British School was open for business as usual, as they follow their own calendar (BST rocks) so Terry and I had a chance to do something we used to do a lot before becoming saddled with so many grownup responsibilities. We went to the movies.

First, though, we paid our respects to Maman the giant spider, people-watched from a bench in the shadow of her egg sac and snacked on shrimp tempura rice balls, which came wrapped in a banana leaf.


Random photo -- crazy-beautiful flowers (vanda orchids) in a shop windowSo we saw Wanted with Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy (which shows too many closeups of people being shot through the skull, but is otherwise entertaining) and then had lunch. We had already settled on Pintokona, which does kaiten sushi (my favorite because the food rolls past on a conveyor belt and you can start eating the moment you sit down) so we only stopped in front of this restaurant guide so I could snap a picture. The choices in this town always seem endless, especially at the mega-mall/office complexes like Roppongi Hills.
Random photo 2 -- little girl on a cell phone
Last stop of the day: Rolling Stone Cafe, which has a bunch of framed magazine covers on the walls and a little poster tribute to Hunter S. Thompson. It also has this great big outside deck, three stories up and set apart from the street, which is nice, and the place was empty when we were there, except for two ladies and their two yippy poodle dogs.
The drinks:
The view looking the other way and up at the sky:
Self portrait by camera phone, propped up by a 100-yen coin:


Eventually I had to go and collect Dylan from a playdate at his new friend Elijah's apartment in nearby Moto-azabu. I took this from their deck, where you can see the Moto-azabu Hills Forest Tower, a.k.a. the Mushroom Tower, a luxury residential building that also houses an international kindergarten and a dental clinic. I kinda like it.