Author Archives: ginzaintherain

This is my seventh day in here. It hasn’t been easy. But I am not complaining. I can walk on the hikoki frame. I bend my left leg, even if it feels like an unbasted chicken drumstick/ swollen baseball bat. I can finally get out of the room (lightbulbed: no natural light; stuck with another person for the entirety beyond this curtain —

which is a world of issues unto itself.)

Today is going to just be a ramble / bitchfest / gratitude diary mainly for selfish reasons just to exPUNGE some of this shit for bedtime catharsis — but also because you might find it interesting and entertaining.

There is a tendency for things to suddenly disappear on here when I am writing on my phone, which could raise my blood pressure to Vesuvial levels- which I definitely don’t need – so I am just going to press publish – now, for example – and update as I go along. If you are looking for a breathlessly sycophantic niche review, go elsewhere. If you feel like the bedridden microneuroses of a ravaged hysteric, look no further.

The State Of Play

Last Thursday I was paralyzed and it was hideous. The jaunty anesthesiologist came to see me for a chat about art – a thing we have started – and to explain why I felt such extreme numbness (she used a particularly strong lumbar spine number because apparently they think I am afraid of pain). This is is not true. I am actually pretty brave in that regard as anyone who knows me will tell you – my physical pain threshold is high, and I don’t complain . Quite strong really ( the man in the next bed thought I was an injured rugby player).

I think they mistake my water obsession – the hospital specifically changed their surgery schedule in order to let me go nil by mouth aquatically for no more than two hours as I said I couldn’t do the surgery otherwise – with bodily feebleness. But I am not the frail type – more a bull in a china shop. People can’t believe that men with broad shoulders can be hypersensitive. But missus I am telling you that they can be.

Anyway, the physios and surgeon are pleased with my progress as is d : he came to see me yesterday and was amazed by the transformation from Friday, when I could hardly move. Yesterday I surprised him for his fifteen minute allowed visit by walking to the lift to greet him.

As I have written before, in more callous counties you would be turfed out after two or three days

HOW

THE FUCK

ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DEAL WITH ALL THIS

BY YOURSELF

?’!!!

It is unimaginable. Here you are treated, nutrifed and rehabilitated until you can walk safely with a cane – a marvellous system for which I have the utmost respect.

Did You Bring Your Intercourse Mat?

When we came in to l’hopital, there were some forms to fill in. Soon d was crying with laughter behind his mask at some of the auto-translations : I thought I would show you.

Have you secured your Oral Pension? Mouth or No Mouth? Mute: silent ? ( yes, I am sharing a room). Final Defecation turned out to be more prophetic than I would have liked it to be, but do feel free to skip this next session – this is meant to be a perfume blog after all.

Prune Wars

Obedience has never been my forte – which I consider a forte. I take matters into my own hands when needed. The food here is excellent quality – a bit mushy, granted, but it’s a hospital – but nutrific to the max and tailor made to each patient and I am going to write a thank you card to the nutritionist – but I CANNOT EAT RICE THREE TIMES A DAY. This has now been rectified – I now have two small bread rolls for breakfast and yoghurt, which is a godsend, I feel so much better. I have the full washoku rice fish wet vegetables miso soup the other two meals – I love how they prepare fish here and it’s great for rebuilding tissue when your knee – the one you were born with, the one you hugged tight to your chin during boring school assemblies as a young child – has been ripped out and thrown in the trash.

Rice, thrice, is a no-no. Even most Nihon-jin vary the carbo once a day – bread, pasta, udon, soba; it becomes real alimentary drudgery – and in some individuals stops up the passages.

Hence the prunes for a bit of slip and slide; dark chocolate (for sanity); nuts because I love them. But the most literal and spectrummy of the nurses saw a stray chocolate wrapper then started going through my bags like an asshole at customs, discovered three bags of cocainr, heroin and methamphetamines – how else was I going to pass the hours – no, I mean prunes and the other goodies – and confiscated the lot.

But Nurse Ratchet, hon, Burning Bush ain’t giving up the prune fight quite so easily : it pleaded with the surgeon the next day to return the evil contraband. Four days in, Chernobyl was avoided.

Vintage Amazone

I am craving perfume and missing my collection.

Interestingly, any thing fragranced smells very different in here; amplified .

This white grapefruit Vaseline ointment I made with Muji essential oil – forbidden – and I don’t want to bother The Other Patient In The Room so have to use it in small quantities – is the best possible thing I could have brought into hospital.

At home it smelled a bit bland and washed out tangerine. In these colourless confines though it smells exactly like a real grapefruit : incredibly invigorating and refreshing – an instant mood booster ( and sometimes, one’s emotions do dip, crikey; have I done the right thing ? will this cobalt implant lead to psychosis, as evidenced in a terrifying Netflix documentary; shouldn’t I have had titanium ? will I really be able to walk again ? Am I going to get my visa in November ? Will I even be able to physically make it into immigration ? When they take the frame and stick away, will I be a quasimodo? Do I really want to be given opioids as painkillers ! Am I going to walk out of here an addict ?…..

So many scared emotions and worries run through your bloodstream and head when you are confined to a curtained hospital bed and can’t even talk on the phone to anyone because of your room partner (a nice diabetic gent in his late sixties in for back surgery tomorrow ; non-racist, easy going, very smiley, but it is awkward not doing how much/ whether I should even be having – conversation is appropriate and how much privacy each of us want and being able to hear every breath, emission, doctor’s explanation)

Scent is a way of bypassing some of this with a sensory immediacy that cuts through crusts of negativity. The pamplemousse is the greatest – but I also love wearing a touch of Nina – didn’t have a shower for four days and was in sudsy H E A V E N yesterday practically ingesting soap I was so eager for it ; on freshly washed skin, the Ricci was a private contentment – although from the bottle, in this context, it smelled darker, more chypric, practically vintage Miss Dior – mossily depraved rather than the holy alabastrine angelic.

Vicarious Hermes

Not being to see the sky, the changes in light, is quite difficult for me. Call it neurodivergence, hypersensitivity, I just think you have to be a moron to prefer closed curtains and electrical lightbulbs when you could – at least visually – be connecting with the air outside.

That’s why I often have the TV on so I can have some nature in the background, or else the fine rumps of the Kōshien baseball players out sweating in the sun; the sizzling food porn of Japanese cookery shows that really stir up your gastric juices even while irritating you at the same time with their banal predictability.

When d was about to leave yesterday I suggested he try a recycle shop that is sometimes open in Hodogaya, just a few stations away. There is a Spanish empanada place he could try and he could possibly pick me up a vintage fume or two if they had any to give me an imaginary olfactory thrill.

One of mine – I don’t know why – is Nina by Nina Ricci (1987). A very soapy, green, mimosa blackcurrant aldehyde with a classic vetiver moss musk base, it captured my heart when I first smelled it nearly forty years ago – and still takes me to a calm, almost Hellenistic place of classical refinement.

I brought it into hospital with me.

Although yesterday was horrible : I couldn’t feel either of my legs for two hours and was convinced I was paralyzed – even the nurses looked concerned – gradually, I had a ghostly phantom limb sensation under the druggy severance, and could eventually move my ankles and toes.

It was forbidden, but I was wearing some Nina on my left wrist.

Linden, or lime tree blossom, or tilleul– a very evocative French word that accurately captures this flower’s sighful nostalgia, is one of those natural floral experiences – as you pass by under a tree; as you catch it on the air – that is irrevocably mood- altering. For me, it is also a smell full of ambivalence. On the one hand, linden suddenly catches you off guard, dipping you into a dream ; pollened and drowsy, there is a plunging melancholia yet also a strongly euphoric aspect to its savoury perfume that makes it transcendental. Strolling down Unter Den Linden in Berlin, perhaps the world’s most famous avenue of linden blossoms, the soft wooze of the benignly pungent odour drifting off the trees immediately severs you from the every day.

On the other hand, there is something quite gaggy and overly fulsome about lime blossom that is slightly too fecund. Like chamomile, which can repulse me – especially as a herbal tea (tilleul tisanes have the same effect), I am not drawn to anything bilgey, grassy or barn-like :tatami mats can leave me queasy; I cannot tolerate immortelle. This is not an attraction/repulsion mechanism, as when you put your head into a full throng of jasmine or gardenias or wisteria or lilies and experience deep pleasure and a dirty problematic as holistically enjoyable: with certain other flowers it is more a lunging split-screen of like/dislike. I sometimes feel similarly about lilac; freesias; even osmanthus, which, though devastatingly attractive initially when it comes out at the beginning of October, can eventually make me feel a bit peachy around the gills.

Yesterday, on a whim but also because I wanted to a buy a particular solid rose perfume from the gift shop for my upcoming hospital stay next week, we spent a beautifully serene morning at the Ofuna Flower Center, staying far longer than we had anticipated. Ordinarily, the municipal banality of this place – it can be grim on a cold January day – can dull the inspirations, and I wondered how it might in fact be on a dried-out roasting August day when heat warnings were being given over the tannoys and a gardener told us to be careful in English as well for good measure; ‘stay in the shade: be careful of heatstroke!‘. So we headed straight for the outdoors cafe under the shade of a big tree and ended up sitting there for a very long time indeed, the shimmer of cicadas in the background a soothing orchestra.

There was almost no one there. A-sight impaired older woman in lace and straw hat straight out of a Monet painting with her guardian sat for an equally long time at another table, as we all stared out quietly at the vista of lotuses and wild flowers- a little straggly, but all the better for it- I am have never been a fan of botanical neatness – until we decided that we too should venture around the garden just a little seeing that we had paid the entrance fee. The sun was too unrelenting to stand under its gaze for too long, but it was fascinating to see the lotus flowers and how they were being treated with specific aqua-hydraulics and to smell them up close- ornate, aquatic, pristine, above everything — and then head into the hothouse.

It was so hot outside, like an African savannah – D said that yes, it did remind him a bit of when he lived in Tanzania- that the greenhouses’ windows were open, creating a slightly limp, dried out effect you would not usually associate with jungly botanica. None of the raw steamy verdancy and free facial hydration you get upon entering a climate-controlled tropical environment. A bit dessicated and wilting – there was not a soul in there – but therefore more intimate. The musa banana varietals looked alive but not quite thriving; the ylang ylang tree, which I was thrilled to come across (the garden even has a ‘ylang ylang illuminated at night’ feature on August 16th which I will be sadly missing as I will be on the ward then) and which had very extensive, raggled flowers – much bigger than the ones I have seen before (the only other time I have encountered ylang ylang trees on the stem, in the flesh, was when I naughtily picked some from a tree when in Malang, Java, in 2013, beside myself with glee to have finally encountered them just casually existing in the middle of an Indonesian city.)These impressively scaled flowers were a little flaccid and limp: up close, they had the fundamental ylang ylangness of ylang ylang – the more penetrating characteristics you find in lesser quality essential oils – but not quite the exhilarating living flower breath.

If not the ylang ylang, then what was the exquisite scent that met you upon entering that particular room of the greenhouse? My nose led me to the almost linden-like pom poms of a tree I didn’t recognize, but which turned out on closer inspection to be Royal Mahogany, or Everfresh – a light, soul-lifting floral scent from South America – gentle, sensual, a little like snowy azaleas, one of my favourite flower smells – and it filled the room gorgeously – gently, not overly narcotically – and which made me think about how heavy linden blossom is in comparison.

I have never really worn tilleul. There was an Occitane extrait back in the day which I semi-liked and would wear occasionally on summer mornings; I also had a ‘pillow spray’ from some Provencal outfit or other but it never really spoke to me. I guess I don’t really do full ‘blowsy’. Baruti’s Onder De Linde, which I am glad to own but which is alien to my sensibilities (pear, lilac, linden, honey over sandalwood musks) is of the Une Fleur Cassie family of perfumes that I can find alluring – but like linden itself, acacia, and mimosa sometimes too – somehow too invasive and troubling for some psychological reason I can’t entirely pin down. I like my flowers more overt, forthright; dazzlingly fleshy – tuberose for instance, white and ghostly and so dazzling to the senses – and which I could eat. Tilleul is of a more spring/autumnal bent, for those of a more sensible, sober nature- and I think spiritually I am more inherently created for the summer.

Having said that, another linden I do have in my collection and which I do wear on occasion is Schwarzlose’s IA-33, an enjoyably sunny portrait of Berlin that has an extremely appealing top accord of neroli, mandarin and linden blossom that can send you briefly ecstatic with its implacable positivity – until, a few hours later, it wimps out with a wan ending when the detested amberwood/’oud’ note appears making the perfume, if not unwearable, just no longer enjoyable (there is only a very small quantity). Even that, though, is enough to put me off, in the end, and the reason I no longer go near much modern perfumery : I truly wish that those aromachemicals had never been invented.

Which brings us to today’s perfume in question, Tilia by Marc-Antoine Barrois – a Parisian niche perfumery with a range of fragrances created by the ubiquitous Quentin Bisch. As it goes, I would say that this is definitely my favourite linden of all those I have smelled so far: spiky and uplifting, with a very legible immediacy – principally because the perfumer, rather than keeping the dried out husks of linden blossoms in their original beige and monocled hessian, decides, interestingly, to dye the flower a counterintuitive pinky coral red red. Deep red, staining them with vital jasmine sambac; from drab coloured wear to night gown — I find this a very inventive and exploratory opening accord for a linden perfume : my interest was duly piqued.

The blurb goes thus:

Simple. Solar. Smiling. It is the scent of everlasting summer. Of holidays that never end. Of long lazy lunches with friends, out in the countryside, around a big wooden table. Of flowers that just keep on blooming.

Tender verdancy, pollen, honey from the linden tree with its lovely heart-shaped leaves, an emblem of softness and flexibility for the Celts. The honeyed, apricot inflexions of broom. The tender powder of heliotrope. A bucolic bouquet made still richer with a sprig of velvety jasmine Sambac. Underlined, like a stroke of shade intensifying the radiance of an afternoon in the sun, by the smoky earthiness of vetiver…

It has to be said that the composition does work very well, which is why it has been such a rave review online hit. Tilia is both familiar and new. Modern; sharp, fruity, clean, with the grapey tones of the current Givenchy L’Interdit giving the perfume sauce, it speaks in a silky boutique hotel bath robe language I found instantly attractive.

But would I wear it?

I was wearing it. And was glad it had come my way. I will still reach for it every once in a while. There is a rather craveable facet to Tilia which essentially means that Monsieur Bisch has done a good job. When a perfume has an angle or a hook that you get caught on, it distinguishes itself from all the others you know from the past and the present — and becomes a need.

Sadly, all the enthusiasm I had at the beginning for this perfume was, I suppose inevitably, soddened by the slowly accruing realization that every time I put on Tilia, I kept being transported to a gaggle of British teenage girls in low cut grey cotton track suit trousers and thrust up boob tops laughing a little menacingly on the Chiltern Line from Solihull into the station at Birmingham Moor Street.. The requisite orange foundation. The clogged fake eyelashes. The ‘contouring’. The whole lo-cost Kim Kardashian look that has taken over the UK for the last few years and rendered otherwise pretty girls bargain basement drag queens ( I remember Helen telling about the time her son Beau went to Belgium, and in a beautiful medieval city, he had the startling realization that here were the unimaginable actual girls of his dreams; hair, faces, bodies, features — not clowns). The girlz can of course smell very sexy, with their nubile Juicy Coutures and Baccarat Rouge knock-offs, their Superdrug body sprays, bubble gums and the unerasable strength of their hyper-strength all day lasting fabric conditioners – the main fragrance they carry about them, and one that fill up the airwaves of the trains until you can no longer think straight. Unfortunately, this is where the base notes of Tilia end up on my skin though ; ambroxan, and ‘Georgywood’ – extrait de laundromat — and they stick to you like a tattoo.

I felt revved up by the new magenta in Tilia when I first wore it. And if I could keep the lower stages hidden in some way I would probably wear this regularly. My transformation into British teenage girl with a low cut velvety bottom is, however, just too alarming, ultimately, for my presently fragile and beleagured soul system. I become estranged from my own essence. And it is at this point, as the linden extract in the Barrois starts to fade, and the chemicals begin to take over. that I then, perversely, start to yearn for the real thing: real lime blossoms, the blowsy beauty of the tilleuls troublants, as they aerate the city and countryside, with all their perturbing, emotional spectrum: their greenery; their natural, spatial awareness.

These days I am all about combos. I am finding that wearing complementary scents in tandem boosts their pleasure and play; their smellability (you can’t become anosmic when the contrasts are so easy to detect on either arm.)

Yesterday I needed emotional security. Nahema is one of the best perfumes for that. But the rare pdt I have is compromised badly in the top accord, which has obviously degraded. The base – all rosey peach cherryade ; muted passionfruit Guerlinade is worth the wait though.

In the meantime, how about Annick Goutal’s lovely Grande Amour (a Nahema tribute, essentially), but greener and more obviously hyacinthine – the hyacinths have gone in my old Guerlain – on the other arm?

Yes ! They propped each other beautifully yesterday – working in concert. It is not the correct weather for these perfumes but sometimes you buck against the fraghead meteorological edicts and weave some olfactory joy nonetheless.

What about more traditionally summer friendly layerings then? A combo can mean on yourself – or it can also involve pairing your scent with another so they give harmonious sillage : wearing clashing perfumes can be pituitary pit-grating for you and those around you – d and I have got it very wrong on several occasions, particularly when he has opted for marine.

Last weekend we were both in green tea. I wore the matcha green Hyouge; he wore Goutal L’Isle Au The – which was like a glass of sparkling lemonade with hints of subtly spicier, smokier undertones that created a real double vibe.

Earlier this week with the New Boilingness I suddenly took to revisiting a rare discontinued favourite of mine, Creed Zeste Mandarine Pamplemousse- a sheer, ambergris lined citrus of great understatement which was cooling to the senses and though rather old school, refreshing and refined. I thought that perhaps Eau D’Orange Verte (unfortunate 2009 remake – why did I buy this?) would work, but nope. Top notes : fair enough. ‘Mossy Vetiver’ base ? I hate it (could be good on the right girl in Tokyo) but here, the effect was simply jarring. Zeste definitely works much better on its own.

What else can be combo’d? Incense, actually. I can’t afford the really high end stuff right now, but with an erratically semi incontinent elderly cat who is currently pissing on the stairs, and – unforgivably – on my RECORD COLLECTION – I know she can’t help it but why did it have to be my beloved Joni Mitchell Miles Of Aisles? —— you had better believe that I consider daily incense to be a true daily essential.

Two very affordable boxes I use which you can get from the local supermarket are the bog-standard Seiun by Nippon Kodo – a hazy benzoin patchouli with a hint of tatami mat that never thrills, but masks to an extent what I shudder over from the cat drips and mopped up leakages and leaves a pleasant aftersmoke of Japanese old temple hanging in the air.

Another I get on occasion is the white rose – Kataribe -by the same company: these sticks I prefer just left sitting in the box – they give off a Japanese pot pourri scent when you walk by; even if when lit, they create a certain sourness (rose can sometimes just be so… fogeyish).

Yesterday I suddenly had a lightbulb moment. Might the rose prominent soliflore joss sticks be rounded and softened by the warmer, more wide reaching benzoin patchouli of Seiun? Might the latter also be rendered less boring and multifaceted by a swirlier upnote of ‘fresh’ rose ?

Bingo ! I vastly prefer these two in combination – and will be burning them together henceforth. Again on the topic of roses, the good roses, I am having really quite the nerve-shredding time of it right now with bureaucracy and pre-operative realities and many other things I have to contend with – don’t we all – and scent is thus more important to me than ever. It really is a cushion, an emotional comfort blanket. We have to go out in a while to deal with some of these things in the town centre despite the incredible heat – and I know I will need my Nahema/ Amour combination – just some, on each wrist, to give some anchoring. I will also have my more recent Nahema eau de parfum in my bag – not perfect, but a thrilling, very soapy rose hyacinth opening – that I may find myself spraying when one more notch in the bullshit list has been crossed off and I head outside.

People are boiling in their sleep. It is very hot. The bedroom can easily get beyond thirty degrees. Although the government is warning that air conditioners should be left on all night – there have been an unusual number of heat stroke deaths in the last few weeks, we don’t have one upstairs (ours broke many years ago) : our cool place is the kitchen. At night the solutions are open windows; fans, nudity. It’s actually very comfortable. But some, old folks especially, up in Tokyo and other heat islands, leery of the immune weakening facets of the nasty A/C , retire to their rooms of an evening determined to sleep naturally – but then don’t make it through to the next morning.

Yet how gorgeous and woozy the light is at this time of the year in the late afternoon. The air is throbbing; slowly, moist and alive. Cicadas going crazy. Lilies, still; immune. Down a side street, I watched a young couple get down from a rickshaw and walk, in their summer kimonos, to the gate of this exquisite temple – Jufukuji – one of Kamakura’s finest – bathed in the melting sunglow of light…..without seemingly even breaking into a sweat.

It’s a strange time to be a foreigner in Japan. The number of inflowing visitors has increased ten times since I first arrived – last year 36.87 million of them flowed into the streets of Kyoto, Kamakura, Tokyo and everywhere else in search of ramen and sushi and anime characters and pictures in rented kimono in front of Mt Fuji and fronds of sakura, and the people are not liking it.

Yes, it is fantastic for business. The yen is weak – you get amazing value for your money. I personally think in yen, but even then, a lunchtime set in a decent eatery – we had a delicious Taiwanese rice, main, three side dishes and a dessert for 1,100 yen the other day in Yoyogi, a generous and nutritious Korean bimbimbap in nearby Nakano – and it is unbelievable that in pound sterling that only comes to about 6.50. No wonder tourists can’t get enough of it.

And Japan needs their custom. The government wants to double the influx of inbound passengers from alien territories over the next few years – at least they did until the recent backlash when the subcutaneous xenophobia that always exists here was given free reign by right wing politicians decrying immigration and the special treatment that foreigners get, etc etc etc – it might all sound familiar (Frump continues his insidious spread through the global stratosphere as inescapably as everywhere else – we have the Nihonjin First! posters everywhere on the ride from the supermarket and so on and so forth – it is certainly making me nervous, and I really do have enough to contend with already at present.)

So what gripes does the average Japanese person on the street have about all the greedy gaijin flooding their shores? ‘Manners’ are one: they leave trash everywhere instead of taking it home with them (revelation: neither did Japanese people for many years until the government randomly removed all the rubbish bins from city stations and streets a few years ago, when bins overflowed just like any other country, at first this was done because of security for some G7 baloney or other, and then because of festering coronaviruses lying in wait in old rice ball packets- at any rate, they were goned. Completely. Now there are no dustbins/garbage receptacles whatsoever.As a result, unsuspecting foreigners guzzling soft drinks and sandwiches have no idea where to dispose of their wrappers and leave them on the ground or wherever they happen to be standing. Me included sometimes when the pointlessness of the change gets totally on my wick. Whoops, did I just write that?

What else? ‘They’ don’t understand Japanese ways. This is true: I was indignant the other day on the behalf of J-jin sat on the Keihin Tohoku line when I was on the way back from a doctor’s appointment and three Europeans, who were sitting dispersed among them, hollered over to each other and across the other passengers to continue the conversation they were having: I would never do that in a million years but then I have been here a whole lifetime and know better than to shout in a loud voice on the train when you are supposed to make yourself as churchmousey as possible and not disturb the surrounding passengers. I could feel their discomfort though.

Foreigners walking along eating noisily. Foreigners taking up all the hotels so that Mr Businessman can’t afford a room anymore when he comes up to Tokyo from Osaka. Foreigners showing off their tattoos on the beach. Foreigners getting special tax discounts at Muji and Uniqlo. And so on and so forth. PLUS: the Peskies are eating all the raw fish as the unstoppable rise of washoku and sashimimania inhabits the earth (George I hold you personally responsible! ) ; rice prices have gone up astromonically, causing seismic political consequences – of course non-Japanese are blamed for that as well, pigs who just can’t stop eating tonkatsu-don the second they arrive in the country with supposedly the best cuisine on the planet. Good honest Ms Suzuki and family in their modest apartment in Kawasaki are thus saddled with untenable costs for their monthly bag-o-gohan —– and they just can’t take it any longer!

And ! now ! the supply of matcha – powdered green tea – is also running low, as Starbucks Frappuccinos and their many imitators suck up all the pulverized camellia sinsenses from the silos and a world health craze featuring the polyphenolic miracle means everyone is clammering to put matcha tea in every ‘beverage’ they can get their hands on and draining the native supply. Farmers and green tea manufacturers- who refuse to compromise on quality, as the ‘way of tea’ that has been passed down for generations – a rigid aspect of Japanese culture I do admire – are saying that for the time being, if stocks run low or even out, then tough titties desu – or perhaps there is a more polite expression for it. In any case, matcha tea does, certainly, have a holy sanctity in the nation as the basis of the tea ceremony, hours long; glacially paced as a Noh play; a shuffle of a tabi slipper here; a whisk of the powder there; the slow contemplation of eternity etc etc (or just ultra torturous boredom not to mention the strain on the knees) : these bygone, ultra aestheticized austerities hardly feature in the lives of the everyday Japanese, who are more likely to have their matcha in a cheap boiled sweet.

Because what does really feature in everyday Japanese life, powdered green tea wise, is the taste of matcha powder as a vital ingredient in quotidian comestibles. It is indispensable here. I had some matcha covered Mexican polverone cookies the other day from 7 Eleven (like Scottish shortbread a la beurre but cut into little round balls) and goodness were they delicious; the naughtiness of the butter offset by the bitterness of the green tea around the edges; a contradictory thrill. I swear I could feel the health benefits suffusing my body the second I swallowed one – they were perfect with an early afternoon hot cup of coffee. Matcha ice cream always competes with vanilla for the favourite flavour in gelato-parlours; it’s in so many sweets and drinks and beauty products it is not surprising that the locals are pissed off that the sacred powder is being hoovered up by slovenly ogres in ill fitting shorts and t-shirts that now dominate the sightseeing landscape wherever you look (whatever happened to an outfit in summer, by the way: where the hell are all the Diana Von Furstenberg wrap around dresses, the floaty floral summery flimsy? Why are people fine lumbering about looking like mouthbreathing meatballs? I am hardly Beau Brummell myself but Jesus people, how about a squidgeon of slight elegance once in a while – or am I starting to sound like a ‘race traitor’).

Anyway. Forgive me. It’s been a while (I will go into all that in another pos)t. Tonight we are talking about the scent of matcha, and I have just had a long and luxurious bath in a hotel room (75 pounds a night! Three stars! In groovier than groovy Tokyo neighbourhood Koenji, where I am having my last pre-operative shout before cracking down to alleged teetotalism at a collective of friends doing a dj night called Egomaniac ! – D has an electrifying set for later, even if I will be sitting for almost all of it in my ‘specially provided chair’- give me new legs so I can dance again!!!! ); he is out, as we speak, with Michael/ Belgium Solanas, sweating like only the gaijin do, rolling out the beer barrels from Shinjuku (and the ingredients for the night’s themed cocktail, white rum based Embittered Peach – very nice, actually – we had some on the tropical balcony the other night and they went down very smoothly indeedy).

Initially, I considered going to the party tonight with just my one shower from this morning. But then I felt a bit greeby just from the hot train journey up (the train was like a fridge, obviously, but all those platform changes do make a difference to your smell-personage )- sometimes you need to perfume yourself just right :::: langurously; to perfection. To just to properly lie in a bath in scented products – the hotel provides very nice bath salts, which I used profusely, blending some citrus selections with a rose, and coming out smelling soapy and clean as a marble Venus. But what to wear? Recently I have been suffocating all and sundry with my tropical florals; total Death By Jasmine, and tonight even I recoiled. I briefly considered wearing Cartier Must II Eau Fraiche – which I see now goes for 75,000 yen on ebay; it is a very strange perfume I have taken to the last couple of weeks; an airy, narcissus honeysuckle vetiver with a strongly citric beginning – it can work, but is a little precarious. And it is hot outside. Baking. I don’t need pissy.

I have also taken to wearing two perfumes simultaneously in the last few months, just so as to be able to smell them better and enjoy while the penniless stocks still last. Obviously, they have to work together for a successful pairing; Lush Lust and my Jasmine Attar Full are utter perfection in tandem, one on each arm as long as you don’t die of indolic asphyxiation in the first twenty minutes or so – after that it is about eight hours of floral bliss and my absolute soundtrack of this strange and difficult but occasionally very enjoyable ‘year off’. This morning, on a new tangent, I was suddenly drawn to a spritz of Rogue Vetifleur (which I have written about before). And then my arm did dart to a forgotten corner of the desk and pick out Satori Oribe (a shocking fact: the perfume is now called Hyouge, but because I featured this scent using its original name, inspired by the master tea ceremonialist Furuta Oribe in my book Perfume: In Search Of Your Signature Scent, it had to be changed due to a threat of legal action by the famous hairdresser Oribe and is now called Hyouge ( the perfumer Satori Osawa was very gracious about it)); a perfume I have only ever previously considered as being delicate, green and rather strange but not necessarily wearable – —a mistake I have lavishly corrected ce soir.

Most green tea perfumes have that built in western comfort zone that makes them smell absolutely nothing like green tea. Whether Bulgari, Elizabeth Arden, L’ Artisan, Roger & Gallet or whoever else, they completely lack the indigenous Japaneseness of bitter green tea with its peculiar, ancient herbiage: even after all these years of living in Japan and quite happily imbibing o-cha once in a while it is a smell and taste I find more evocative than acutely pleasurable. Hyouge (‘Jester’) – is the perfumer having a joke on us in some way here? is also a difficult wear, it has to be said at least I thought so until this morning – when it suddenly made total sense.

On first spray, this perfume smells like a glass of freshly squeezed apple juice sipped in a barn of green straw. Freshly mown grass scents mingle with sage and some very bitter matcha absolute to create an odd but astringently refreshing top accord that is underlayed by some jasmine, iris and violet leaf for more French foundational underpinnings; the base is then a subtle patchouli with the fresh greenness of the whole never quite dissipating. It is highly unusual as a blend and totally original. The Vetifleur (two sprays) on my left wrist is working beautifully as a counterpoint to the piquant – but soft – greenness on my right, on my neck and t-shirt and hair (I confess to having used about twenty sprays as I want to imprint this precise olfactory memory on tonight forever); leaving this room briefly to get an ume and shiso onigiri from the conbini just now, the hot air thwarming with bustle and commuters coming home and the odd wackily dressed anime gajin in ridiculous blue pigtails here and there- Koenji is something of a countercultural institution, home to the student riots of the sixties- I couldn’t actually have been happier with this evening’s scent choice. It is completely unobvious; chic; fresh; and perfect for one of those days, when, in all honesty, I just adore being able to live in Japan.

—— smells of lemon, old ginger, and plastics

The first time I smelled this perfume I assumed it was a joke. Indolic Horror. A mothballing Eros/ Thanatos: overwhelming and oversaturated in/ with itself. Vile, even.

Now it is definitely in my Top Ten. If not my Top Five. I cannot live without it. Only this perfume rushes to fill the void on a Hot Summer’s Night – I spray it on my body and underclothes and go into some kind of ecstatic sweat trance; it physically stains the skin and clothes red – see frequent complaints online – so beware – but I don’t care, and enter a very particular, deep-breathed space away from daily refrigeration where everything feels hot-blooded and Real.

A stupidly rich, and extremely intoxicating, Pakistani jasmine absolute : rich ! filthy ! is cradled with ylang ylang and rose oils in the offset of this perfume but neither is perceptible as such : these essences are merely there to exalt the JASMINE, glorious !which is bolstered cleverly in the base by clovey sandalwood and vanilla – and which on me – D has just confirmed this – smells quite fantastic

Like the repugnant ‘Time Is A Hermes Object’ slogan from a while back, this commandeering of art by the Luxury Corporate Slugs makes me sick.

There is no way that Jean Michel Basquiat would have approved this

I have been rather enjoying wearing this the last couple of days. Although I am not always 100% keen on neo-chypres (something about the ‘dead civet’ quality in the base of perfumes like Heeley’s Chypre 21 or Rogue’s Chypre Siam prevents these neoclassicisms from ever fully taking off), Chyprelia is more like a straight-up homage to (or even modern reformulation of) a vintage classic – Dior’s Diorella to be precise – and for me, it totally works.

For me, this is nothing but Diorella – (though did the base this morning remind me a little of Chanel Pour Monsieur Concentrée? )with added effervescence. Extraordinarily sparkling and bright, the lemon/jasmine/aldehydes burst like stars in the head notes, with subtly peachy-ylang for added heart and sustenance, over a soft, but enwrappingly chypric base of vetiver, oakmoss, patchouli and sandalwood that is totally brash amber-free: gentle, but believable. While Chyprelia might not house the darker, inner mysteries of the original seventies citric chypres, the perfume hangs about you elegantly, sensuously contained – and with its light witticisms and uplifting freshness, is perfect for a summer garden cocktail party. I need to smell more perfumes from this house.