Monthly Archives: July 2014

 

 

Especially when it’s in a hospital, and you come to pay, and it smashes to the ground when you pull it out accidentally with your wallet from the front of your jeans pocket – shards of sharp, Alfred Sung original piercing the air; patients jumping away to avert the splashing; citruses; rivulets of white tropical flowers and green, 80’s muguet.

 

 

 

It’s approaching the end of term and you can see it on my face.
Not having used my neroli skin cream for a couple of months I decided to make some again the other day, interested to see if what I wrote here about the essence before were still objectively observable.

It was. There is no face saver like essential oil of neroli : it is rejuvenation central. Absolutely brilliant stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night, as the typhoon was still lashing Okinawa, when I got to the station at Ofuna and the train doors opened I just thought sea. The entire air had been convulsed and moiled, like a salty, kelp-loden interlude. I found it refreshing, inviting. A geographical shift; unexpected. As I walked up the hill to the house the air was mist-covered; shrouded, but clear. Touching, vaguely, on spooky, but more on the magical tip; with things and plants thrown into silhouetted, gloomy relief against the electric light of the moon, despite what a Japanese friend called, intriguingly, ‘this disquieting air’.

 

 

 

 

 

Today, as it rages across the country, offloading water by the godfull , causing all kinds of havoc in the southern prefecture of Kagoshima, Kyushu: where we are, near the capital, it was sunny this morning, only tinting into bruised and blowy by the afternoon, when the winds began to blow and the grasses by the river in the centre of Yokohama were streaming in undulation, as though they already somehow thought that they were swimming, under water – oceanic.

 

 

 

 

Tonight, coming home ( I should have taken the bus, of course but couldn’t resist being exposed to the rain), by 10pm it still felt safe enough to walk: the eye of this typhoon, weakened, in all probability by its journey across Japan, due to hit us directly at about 3am this morning – about three hours or so precisely from when I am typing this.

 

 

 

 

 

I wanted to smell it, though. To just breathe it in and see how it altered the landscape. Coming out of the station I hesitated to open my umbrella, at first, as the rain – warm, spattering, iodized, delicious – encountered my face in a lung-bathing softness of summer life  wetness. I marvelled at the way that the pungent loam of recent moisture, of decaying white June flowers, vetiver grass, lilies and fire flies had been usurped, denied, by these winds that are freshening and replenishing the air with pine-kissed, mistral winds; the precursors, of levity, of the mammoth, swirling eye-storm you see in these pictures (taken of the supertyphoon at the zenith of its terrifying strength yesterday, from the Soyuz station,watching the whole scene serenely, keenly, from that galactical, fascinating vantage point of silent tranquillity in the sky) and which has unleashed its fury on other places across the continent but, which should, if the meteorological reports are to be believed, just pass over us tonight, not unpunished, but not destructive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The balcony has been evacuated, just in case –  all plants brought inside to prevent them flying away. The cat has gone out just now, briefly, but I know that she’ll be back soon in all probability (though this is definitely not guaranteed  – this cat loves the hair-raising excitement of a typhoon (as do we, secretly; as do my students, too, when I asked them about it tonight) and you can sometimes hear her, with another of the neighbourhood cats , taking risks and running about, wildly, in wind and the rain, her heart beating wildly; calling out; rushing about; adrenalized, even as we try and shout to her, not daring at this point to venture outside, to call her back in to the window shut confines.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow the sky will be washed clean. Blue as hell. Exonerated. The days after a typhoon in Japan are some of the most beautiful weather you could possibly experience. It’s almost like being reborn. Everything sullen, moulding, has been torn away and eliminated; even tonight I could smell a harbinger of this in the air as the vegetation on the mountainside prepared itself in readiness for the ‘purification’. There were already twigs and grass on the ground lining the usually neat and well kempt roads; by tomorrow morning there will be branches, leaves in droves and all  manner of messy, natural detritus; but it will feel post-deluvial; glad, dry; sun-kissed. I only wonder now whether I will get any sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Takashimaya, in Yokohama, is the Japanese Selfridge’s. Along with its great rival, Sogo, on the other side of the station, this beloved institution provides all that any self-respecting person could want in terms of clothing, cosmetics, jewellery, and the gourmet bento box. And perfume, also, although, compared to Isetan Shinjuku and its array of harder to get niche, Takashimaya may come across as rather conservative (because it is).  All the exclusive lines from Chanel, Hermès, Armani Privé and the like can nevertheless be found here, along with Guerlain, Bond, Sisley, Bulgari and the usual, more standard, suspects.

 

 

 

 

What is not so usual though, for the ‘westerner’ at least, is the way that you are welcomed in this place, if you happen to find yourself there at opening time, as I did – to my horror – once, when for some reason I was passing through the store to get to a record shop on the other side (it makes for quite a good short cut, usually) and had just got there, as fate would have it, at the moment that it opened. I was, one of, if not the first customer in there.

 

 

 

 

 

Where in any other country you would be greeted perhaps with a twinkling, purse-lipped stare; hands clasped firmly in front, at the waist, in that wry, air hostess pose of courtesy, in Japan, it is an entirely different kettle of fish: the air clanging with the shrill, bird-like cries of welcome and appreciation; seas parting and opening for you like Moses on the mount – a gently rippling wave of reverence, clerk upon clerk bowing down rigidly, slowly, and formally, as you pass by them with a volume controlled, throat-clenched, but very insistent ‘irrashaimase!!’, not pausing or coming up for breath until you have safely passed their sales space, which, when they do, they do so, measuredly as a crane, until the next king-is-customer passes by blindly; nonchalantly, head held high, surveying what is on offer in the store, ignoring completely the mewling vassals grovelling insincerely, still, at their feet.

 

 

 

 

 

This was my first (and last) time: I had simply not been expecting this, and had no idea what to do.  No:   sh-sh-shhh, n-n-n….no ssh-ssssssshhh please don’t, I cry inwardly,, not knowing where to look; no, n-no for god’s sake get up will you, this is mortifying, mortifying  ! S t o p it!!  Jesus!  Grown men and women bowing down gracefully and worshipfully as I pass by, blushing and deeply embarrassed, in God-like, emperor fashion, the contemptuous, head-lopping Queen Of Hearts as I sharpen my eyes cruelly and puff up, now, inexorably, with power:    ” OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!!”  I find myself screeching at the top of my lungs as one lowly assistant fails to achieve the appropriate tilted 45º angle and I come at her with my sword  – and a carefully combed, meticulously groomed head of long black hair goes shooting across the shiny polished floor like a German soccer ball pounding a Brazilian net.

 

 

GET OUT OF MY WAY cry I in vexed irritation, desperate, now, scything, threshing through them with my swooshing, flashing sword, as boot-licking make-up ladies bow deep, right down to the waist and go flying in all directions in chunks –  pitiably, their beautiful, Shiseido-stained lips and toned, trained, facial muscles still fixed in the stiff, pre-ordained morning rictus of awe.

 

 

 

 

Then, on that  one, and only occasion , I was, truly, screaming inside, wanting to disappear, just   GET ME OUT OF HAYYY-RRRRRR:;;;;;;     feeling, indeed, like some cruel, imperial master, with slaves at the ready to fawn over my every move and to kowtow into submission as I approached the coruscating gloss of their brightly polished concessions, desperately eyeing possible escape routes and making a beeline for the door (“WHERE’S THE BLOODY EXIT!!!”);  to get out of this nightmare of veneration, which I had never in my life experienced before and which I have avoided ever experiencing since.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Except, most memorably, for one, excruciating, occasion with the Duncan, at another relatively esteemed establishment : Marui (aimed more at the ‘younger shopper’) than Takashimaya, but still, naturally, maintained with the levels of utter politeness one takes for granted in the rightfully dubbed Land Of The Greatest Service In The World; where you get what you pay for, where the customer is queen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What applies to the jubilantly grave welcoming of each and every customer as they enter the doors of the store of a morning is also true, of course, for the evening, as well, and the moment when the o-kyaku-san are making their ways to the exits laden down with their beautifully designed paper bags to the backdrop of Auld Lang Syne, which everyone in Japan knows signals, gently but energetically, that it’s time to go  ( in China the preferred tune is, apparently, the even more subtle ‘Going Home’ by Kenny G),  and D and I were there among them, making our way out of the store, me having sampled some perfume upstairs, he probably having purchased yet another pair of shoes, and we found ourselves coming down the escalators, passing by the male and female assistants on each floor who had, naturally, lowered their heads and their eyes; hands clasped delicately together in self-effacement as the shoppers came towards them down from the floor above, bowing in exhausted thanks for their patronage, the exact moment that Duncan suddenly decided, once we had reached the mezzanine, to do up his shoelaces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As he took his time, crouched, correctly doing up each lace, me boredly chewing gum and lost in my own thoughts and wondering where were going to go next, I suddenly, to my aghast amazement, looked over and saw that, dear lord…………… their heads were still down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bowed down at the waist, waterfalls of carefully combed, thick black hair like Sadako-chan in The Ring: stuck, rigidly, in that position, unable to move up properly until each customer had passed their way properly, been remerciated completely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Duncan!!  D u n c a n!!!!!!   Hurry up!!!  Look!! Their heads are still down, they can’t move ……….hurry up with that f*%$@ shoelace before they both have brain haemorrhages, will you, get  U P…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t know what those clerks must have been thinking as they stood there, bent over, face down, the blood draining slowly from their heads, and they pondered their impending deaths, but I do know that I stared at them in cultural disbelief as we finally got onto the next, ever-descending escalator and I watched them slowly; ashen-faced; rise back to the starting position.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are the only two times in Japan that I have been in the (un)fortunate position of being the recipient of such blood-curdlingly polite service. It isn’t for me, this aspect of the society, and it wasn’t for my mother either, when she came the first time after I had not long arrived and we were being served by a waiter in a  Kyoto restaurant (“Ooh no, I don’t like this: he’s a bit subservient, isn’t he?”), but if you do, for some reason, have secret, unexpressed, delusions of grandeur, and fancy the fantasy of lording it over the masses like a cruel, empress dowager, then I do fully recommend trying this out as part of the Japan Cultural Package if you ever do find yourself coming to Tokyo or Yokohama; to fully do the royal shopping experience, with all the exquisitely executed service that you know in your heart you were born to be given.

 

 

 

 

Surely, one day myself, if I can face it  (drunk?)  I should also try out the guaranteed-to-be-spectacular opening time in Isetan, Shinjuku. It must be strangely thrilling, discombobulating, to be there in the finest department store in Japan, at the grand, matinal overture each day, with such a huge staff-to-customer ratio, where you can practically trip over black-clad assistants as you intrepidly take a deep breath and go in, walking in there, as the iron and glass doors swing open, and carpets of immaculately trained and turned out workers bow down in staggered unison as you pass them by…….. it must truly feel like true consumerist heaven: customer as empress: pure dominion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were headed up to an obscure part of Shinjuku in the evening on Saturday night for a small performance in a theatre there, but, naturally, I insisted we stop off first for a bit of sniffing at Isetan in the town centre beforehand, specifically because I wanted to see if my instincts were right about Mareschialla – an aromatic, tobacco and nutmeg scent by Santa Maria Novella I had smelled a few weeks ago, quite liked, and which I thought might be quite good as one of those characterful and dandyish scents for the D. The SMN apothecary, spacious, delicately lit, and situated aloofly on the eighth floor of the iconic department store (next to a chic little coffee bar, and a tiny, cramped, and über-chic shot bar into which I saw a beautiful woman in lilac kimono disappear) is rather appealing, with enough room to sample the extensive wares at your leisure without being pounced upon by sales ladies – these are nice and knowledgeable assistants for once; but, despite my anticipation, D wasn’t having of this Mareschialla business which, on closer inspection, rather than the spicy and dry cologne I was thinking of, was more like a sour and musky, deeply rosed and fusty potpourri scent with mulchy spiced accents (mainly clove and nutmeg) that I still myself like, I must say, but which he said smelled horrible – like an old beef stock cube.

 

 

 

We did the full range.  Peau D’Espagne smells as gorgeous as it always did, an antique, gazelle-hued kid glove (the perfect soft leather scent?), but too blond and sweet, somehow, for either of us to think about wearing ourselves. Città di Kyoto, another scent I was trying for the first time, a powdery sandalwood iris-musk, is in fact vaguely reminiscent, somehow, of that unforgettable and haunting city, with slight reminiscences of vintage Shiseido Feminité Du Bois, but also, for me personally, a little bit too Comme Des Garçons (in that typically woody way); worth trying though if you like a gauzy, incense-ish, subtle sandalwood skin-scent. Eva was quite nice, I thought: a very soapy, fresh-lemon floral vetiver that it would be quite hard not like for its clean, relaxed expansiveness, but, again, not something that either of us would wear. A much better fit for D, unsurprisingly, was Tabacco di Toscana, which I didn’t even know existed, but which from first inhale you realize is not one of Santa Maria Novella’s musty antique scents all’Italiana but one of those more modern additions to the collection; a sweet, sawdusty, dry, and long lasting perfume that caresses the skin with a light tobacco undertone and modern sensual musks in a way that reminded me a bit of Bulgari Black. It lasted all day and well into the night, and had that requisite ‘loveable’ quality that draws us both in, meaning that it might, at some point I think, have to be purchased.

 

 

 

 

 

Prior to entering the perfume haven of Isetan we had just, on the semi-pedestrianized main street of Kabukicho, seen a big, loud and angry street protest against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s controversial bill to change the Japanese pacifist constitution and widen the scope of the military – a move that right-wingers approve in this time of deep and rising friction between China and the two Koreas but which, given the country’s colonial history and past mistreatment of those countries, has obviously been met with incendiary responses, not only from Koreans and Chinese but from many Japanese as well: in fact, only last week a sixty year old man self-immolated in the middle of Shinjuku, a truly shocking act that one really doesn’t expect to happen in such a ‘well-behaved’ and politically docile country as Japan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That the country has been shifting to the right, though ( as is most of the world, it seems )is something I didn’t need to be told by reading the newspaper: you can feel it. There is an nationalistic introversion in the air, less interest in other countries – as evidenced by the ever-decreasing number of Japanese students going abroad to study, and a certain, cold-eyed curtness towards foreigners that I have noticed at times recently . There is also, increasingly, I fear, a lot of overtly aggressive rhetoric about the country’s rivals in Asia, particularly China, even from my students, something I am not at all comfortable with and remonstrate them for –  you can only imagine the conversations around their families’ dinner tables.

 

 

 

 

 

I will not get into all of this now in detail, but one thing I do know – the situation is complicated, fractious, and getting worse. While I can fully understand the viewpoint of those who say that the U.S-imposed post-war constitution, which forbids the use of any militaristic action by Japan except in pure self-defense, is perhaps outdated, given the shifting power balances in the Asia-Pacific region, and deprives the country of the basic right to run its own military (not to mention the indignity of having to still rely on American army to defend them, seventy years after the end of the war), simultaneously, the absolute, almost triumphalist lack of remorse relating to the World War II actions of Japan and the bulldozing over the sensibilities of countries that were affected by Japan’s imperialist aggressions in the time since, make the re-militarizing of the country an issue that many people in Asia, and in Japan, feel understandably very passionate about. It is a major potential shift in policy. For many Japanese, the fact that this country is the only one to have ever experienced the annihilating force of not one, but two atomic bombs (the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum was an edifying but traumatic experience I would not like to repeat, I must say), but, then, successfully rebuilt itself into a peaceful, vibrant, safe and successful society, is something to be very proud of, a peace that feels threatened by Abe’s undeniably nationalist provocations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whatever your thoughts on these issues, it was startling, on Saturday, to be shaken out of one’s anticipated drowsy, easy, shopping reverie by the sudden noise, as we came out of the station exits, of loudspeakers, angry chants, the beating of drums, and the passing by of thousands of people vehemently demanding that the constitution not be changed; comparing Abe to Hitler; campaigning for peace, and for death to the fascists. The disconnect between the materialist morphine of window-shopping, and the stark realities of the shifting nature of society (and I can feel it shifting: what is going to happen in the next few years? Could the ridiculous spats over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands turn into actual war?) opened up some strange void in me on Saturday, I must say. I was tired from the week anyway, but the sky was bruised and swollen, and clear, yet peculiarly humid; the gathering of people together often can give rise to a certain tumult in the breast in any case, the impassioned singing of human voices together, but suddenly I really felt as if I were about to burst into tears and I had to get a hold of myself: semi-overwhelmed, some emotion just rising up as if out of nowhere, as though rather than just dreaming about the Tokyo streets in my hedonistic fashion as usual, I were ‘witnessing history’: a history I don’t want to be a witness of, and one, I sincerely pray, that is not about to be repeated.

 

 

 

 

Still, being the drama-addict I am, it was all very exhilarating somehow (anything that shakes up the torpor of the everyday life of people always is), and we darted about, being refuted and pushed back by the sullen faced policemen as we tried to take some photos of the demonstrators; and then, suddenly, a car comes by, trying to get to wherever it was going with a couple sitting in the front with their two hilarious-looking dogs growling out of the windows because the car had come to a standstill in the political human traffic, and I found I just had to leap into the road and approach the car window to capture their expressions; this amusing, gruff, but very real, moment in time.

 

 

 

 

 

Then, to veer away from all this spectating, heart-beating and Che Guevara, stomping street-carnival fury and into the cool, and grave, interiors of Isetan and its world of unquestioning riches; its floors and floors of clothes, bags, wallets, and other things to buy (because you have to buy something, else what are you spending all those exhausting office hours working for?), me immediately making a beeline for the new Heeley corner there to try Coccobello, a coconut, obviously, and a quite nice one at that, if overpriced – a bit ozonic, a big figgy, and dry-woody in the base; not bad, quite a nice ‘escape’ scent (is this all perfume is? An evasion of the harsher realities?), but, again, not something I would necessarily buy. I look for the new Serge Lutens L’Orpheline, but it is not out yet. Scan the shelves. Yes, know all of those.

 

 

 

 

 

We take the elevator up to Santa Maria Novella.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and speaking of mosquitoes……