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 justright :::: 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.
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
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 butDiorella – (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.
I just found this in my raincoat pocket. I wondered where it was. One of the minor acquisitions from the astonishing haul I had at the beginning of May, I was curious to try it on skin. Though not a bona fide maharaja of santal, I do enjoy and crave a golden sandalwood every once in a while: I find the essence soothing, and enriching, at the spiritual level, and often burn sandalwood incense.
Getting my sandalwood fix when I need it from vintage Madame Rochas or Amouage Gold Man (I discovered recently that the ‘Cristal’ bottle I bought a decade or so ago for about ¥10000 (£60) is now actually retailed at £1,750 – wow, and it basically just smells like my beloved Imperial Leather Soap !) or else the occasional dot of Samsara extrait – ooh the Mysore! – Jean Paul Guerlain really did do some good sourcing there…… 。。。。I, like several other Black Narcissi, still nevertheless sometimes badly miss and crave the sandalwood of all sandalwoods, Sandalwood by Crabtree & Evelyn, one of the most pleasurable perfumes ever made.
Hoping that the Roger Gallet mini might take me on a similarly generous seventies odyssey of warmth and soap and sunlight on Indian sandal trees, I was disappointed, on application, to discover that Santal is instead a humorless beard twitcher, the type who likes to play acoustic guitar, alone, in a shed in the middle of a forest and plot against society. Dry, ‘herbal’ a bit ‘spicy’, I find this rather dull and small c conservative; sly. He might be swift-footed and sinew-muscled, this loner; good with his hands; well read — and I have no doubt that Lady Chatterley would be partial to a hard pounding or two behind the lathe on a summer’s afternoon – but no – with his steely gaze, his wooden crossbow hanging menacingly on the back of the door, I know that he and I most definitely wouldn’t get along.
These things are relative of course. The smell of the wrong washing powder does not quite compare in magnitude and seriousness to the vast majority of sociopolitical, physiological, emotional, and ontological crises and catastrophes that plague humanity on a daily basis —— being sent to a war zone in South Sudan is definitely worse.
But it still matters to me. It really matters to me. The ‘bio enzymes’, the aroma chemicals that increasingly pollute the senses on a daily basis really do get to me at the nerve/ stomach level. In the UK, artificial neo- melon ozones I smelled everywhere this spring had me gagging the second I landed at Gatwick Airport , a form of curious reverse culture shock but which has obviously become culturally normalized on the Mothership : in toilets, on people, shop premises (“yes, don’t you think it’s something to do with the pandemic ?”, Olivia said to me wisely on the last evening – the need for an an oversanitized freshness post corona – ‘to put the virus behind us’) – and she is right : disinfecting, cantalouped calones by the gallon to make us forget about illness, grubby intubation, death. A swift backpedalling to those early 90’s, blinding, subarachnoid days of Calvin Klein Escape For Men and Arden Sunflowers and all the other piercing frontal lobe drillers – when inhumanly bright marine notes started being used en masse in functional perfumery everywhere — and headached the atmosphere.
Getting back from the hospital yesterday – though I have to return for a check up tomorrow as things are still a bit swollen – I warily washed some clothes that needed doing with a liquid laundry detergent that happened to there in the bathroom – Attack X or something : yet another of those blue green alien liquids in white plastic bottles that are becoming more and more intense and commercially ubiquitous wherever you go; so very, very far removed from our natural human origins — and I knew that I would immediately regret it. Usually I buy the cheapest powder I can find at our local supermarket : a crap product that barely dissolves in the washing machine, but which I like because it has a virtually odourless, light lemon / generic floral scent that doesn’t interfere with my perfuming once dried : – and this is the whole point. People, I need a BLANK SLATE if I am going to apply a quality scent to my personage, I need no contamination — but YE GADZ : ugh !! now the clothes I am/was going to wear for the appointment tomorrow smell horribly and indelibly like another person – and not a person I want to know. Call me neuro divergent, with my laundry detergent, but my hypersensitivity to an overly intrusive and unnaturally ill-smelling modern washing powder / fabric conditioner knows no bounds. And if the pollutants in question are then worn on my body, that crass, inescapable odour can wreck my entire day.
On the ward, all the nurses smelled universally lovely – they had got their shampoo/ hair treatment / clothes softener combos down to a very site-specific T – clean, calming, trustworthily fragrant: it elevated the air. Other people, though, out in the real world (men especially), often very obliviously combine rank personal body odour, with sour and vividly artificial laundry musks that linger so penetratingly in the air around them they jam up all my signals. Inhaling the smell coming from the clothing hanging out to dry on the balcony at this moment is equally disturbing – like being substituted by an alien life form. It’s only washing powder / liquid – whatever it is pertaining to be – I do realize this – yet purely in smell terms, switched out with another entity, as I inhale this smell I feel like Donald Sutherland, screaming noiselessly in the hope-crushing final scene of
Probably, I could have gone home on Tuesday. I was feeling a bit guilty for still being in here. But Japanese hospitals always like to be on the safe side, making sure there is no infection, that you have had enough physiotherapy, enough post-operative rest; have been properly fed and looked after before they let you go. They are incredibly conscientious.
It was not a major operation. But considering that THIS had been removed from my legs
-and been enmeshed in my bone and muscle tissue for eight years, there was no guarantee it was going to be a walk in the park either ( had I known they were going to be hammering bolts into me like Frankenstein in 2017 I am pretty sure I would have nixed the whole procedure – look at it ! I was a walking hardware store !). I was quite shocked the other day when they presented me with this excruciating paraphernalia as some sort of omiyage – a souvenir from within my own body : I might have to make it into a necklace for Burning Bush.
No. If it were the UK or US, you would be turfed out onto the street with your swollen mummies a day or two after surgery, with a fistful of painkillers and an on your bike. Try not to let the rats get to it – and if it gets gangrenous, come back and we will chop it off.
Plus, if it were the UK, you wouldn’t be having an operation in the first place because you would be on a five to ten year waiting list, crawling like a beleaguered millipede in the dirt before you even got a chance at having surgery, by which time your heart and blood pressure and kidney function et al would be so bad they probably wouldn’t let you have the operation in any case. The procedure would be free, but by the time you were finally wheeled in for it, you would be dead.
Across the pond, surgery and a week in a private room in an American hospital would leave you bankrupt, were you unlucky enough not to have been born into the right circumstances, mopping the floors at Burger King without ‘coverage’ – because remember, people, HEALTH CARE IS NOT A RIGHT !!! COS JESUS SAID SO !!! —- — so you would be sobbing into your receipts as you walked through steel doors : my good friend AI tells mr you would be presented with a medical bill of anything from $17,000 – $100,000 for similar treatment for what I have o my how is this discrepancy even possible ? – and use your new found leg power to promptly jump from the nearest bridge.
In Japan, all citizens pay a monthly health insurance contribution depending on their income, and then 30% of the fees for all medical consultations and medications when they see a doctor or go into hospital for surgeries.
Today’s bill, including surgery, drugs, aftercare, meals, physiotherapy, and sundries, will come to ¥245,000 – or around £1,200, which I think is very reasonable. I am just wondering why in America it could be eighty times higher. I find it … disgusting. And though the staff at the government- funded NHS back in England are undoubtedly doing their very best in the face of the slow disintegration of our national health service – once the pride of the nation – those unfortunate people whose cartilage has gradually disintegrated. and whose bones are aching like mine on a daily basis face years of agony and discomfort : waiting, waiting, waiting, to embark on the eventual, grotesquely delayed, beginnings of a new, more mobile, pain-free existence.
In the Yokohama hospital where I have been staying, I have had immaculate care. A world renowned knee surgeon. Courteous, attentive and friendly nurses, cleaning staff and physiotherapists. Great thought put into nutrition and hygiene. Some amazing food. A successful operation. And, importantly, I was not totally ripped off in the process. While glad to be going home – I will be back in August and November for the joint replacements – at least I know that when I do so I will be returning to a clean and trustworthy environment where I will be comfortable and get the best medical care possible – and at an affordable price. I am very grateful. What can I say ? Amazing !
