TEDxTokyo in 140 characters

Don't bother us, we're tweeting

I helped out with the blogging and social media at TEDxTokyo this year. Highlights of the event included getting spritzed with a taste of chemically engineered "sudden anger," riding in an elevator much bigger than several apartments I've lived in and overhearing a few jaw-droppingly self-important conversations. I'm sorry. I get a kick out of that, though. Maybe I'll tell you who said what next time I see you.

For real, though, the most important part for me was working with the team I was part of. The people I worked with directly are a model for how small, dedicated groups of people can accomplish hairy tasks. I learned a lot from working with them, and I know (okay, I hope) I'll be better at future projects for seeing how they did what they do.

Live tweeting an event, as silly as it sounds (and I will always think it sounds silly) is harder than it looks. To do a good job, that is. I think we did a pretty good job. It felt like being back at the wire service, shooting quotes from the UN Security Council stakeout to the bureau. Except this time, the sound bites were about the endurance of Japanese lacquer-ware and the language of jazz instead of the latest North Korean hijinks. Because of the division of labor, I only saw about a quarter of the speeches live. I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the TEDxTokyo 2013 videos in English. Check them out! I'd be curious to know what you think.
These animated volunteer profiles, for better or for worse, were my innovation.

Some things we brought home from Kyushu

 

New towels, for going in a natural onsen we skipped due to all the naked old men already in it

Coffee beans (strong) from Stax, the first place near us on Yakushima to open in the morning and serve coffee but not for hours after we woke up

Organic Kagoshima ginger ale

Tankan juice, one of the many local citrus fruits

Jar of Takachiho butter, mmmm

Nanja kora daifuku (8, cold-packed), one of my favorite occasional treats in Miyazaki, mochi stuffed with red bean paste, a chestnut, a strawberry, and a cube of cream cheese

Yakusugi ring, to carry around a little of the power of the ancient forest
Yakusugi chopsticks (3 pairs), for gifts
Hard brown sugar lumps, tankan flavor: delicious, and it's not like you're just eating a piece of sugar; it has minerals in it so it's fine

Fluffy salt, hand made from coral-rich sea water

Saigo Takamori postcards, because I have a few friends who are crazy about this guy
Cinnamon balls for the road, more like root beer barrels (do you know them?) than American cinnamon candy
Used socks, from the friends I was staying with because I am a packing genius
New socks from Masamiya, one of the zillion gigantic deep discount shops that's opened since I left Miyazaki

Sneakers (Don Quijote), very cheap, because I also didn't bring any shoes fit for forest walking

Green tea, for gifts

Did you think there would be something cute at the end like "the newfound knowledge that my old pal from Miyazaki drives a Hummer now"? Nah. (But he does.)

Epidemic prevention mats: How not to prevent a bird flu outbreak

It was pretty great to get back to Miyazaki airport, with the fresh fruit soft-serve ice cream stand right at the arrivals area and the palm trees swaying in the fresh air outside. These mats at the airport doors I don't recall seeing before, though. Could these damp mats really be effective — would killing a few germs on the soles of your shoes be enough to prevent an epidemic?
Miyazaki's farming industry has been hit hard by both avian flu and hoof-and-mouth disease, with cow and pig culls in 2010 and mass slaughtering of its famous chickens in 2011, so it's not surprising the prefecture would do whatever it could to prevent the spread of either disease. But it's hard to imagine these wet, threadbare carpets would help much.
(I'd love to hear about it if someone knows otherwise.)

How not to pack for a trip

Slightly less useful for packing than you'd think

What I managed to do in the half day of preparation time I had before my flight to Miyazaki:
Make the bed (off to a good start!)
Take everything out of the closet and lay it out carefully on the bed (a sensible and necessary precondition to packing for a casual weeklong trip)
Cull a few old clothes for disposal, decide to think about optimal arrangement for everything else
Go to Irukaya for a glass of rich iced coffee shaken with lemon and cream
Have a second intense demitasse of coffee
Run back home
Snap a photo of a gigantic plate with a white ceramic gun fused to it that was left out for trash
Send detailed instructions to a friend for retrieving said plate/gun 
Stuff everything back into closet
Turn off the gas (this is a thing— earthquakes)
Chuck a lot of things, mostly for summer, into a suitcase

What I did not manage to do:
Put container of week-old vegetable soup into the freezer or trash
Ditto already overripe avocado
Ditto half carton of milk (free pass — Japanese milk doesn't spoil)
Research travel destination
Ask friends in Miyazaki if it would be okay to stay with them
Eat
Check weather forecast
Pack any socks

What are you doing on a subway ad?!

Spotted and snapped by Shaun, lower right

My friend Shaun asked a few weeks ago if I had a few minutes to get a picture taken. The design firm doing the ad didn't need a portfolio or a head shot; they needed "a white woman," available in the next two hours. And that is how I went from writing about ads and posters plastered on Tokyo's trains to becoming one.

I walked over to the location, a design firm with three computers lined up against the wall in a skinny room. A photographer was shooting the bearded guy (top center) seated next to the windows with a white backdrop. An assistant gave me a cup of tea and showed me a coffee-table art book open to the photos they were using as inspiration. I was surprised that their plan was recreate a work by Jeff Wall, as close to identically as possible, minus the 70's hair. I couldn't think of a diplomatic way to ask if copying it was kosher, especially since it obviously was to them. The bearded guy finished and left, and I sat down on a metal stool placed by the window, looking out at Aoyama. They weren't interested at all in my hair or makeup or jawline. The photographer took a few snaps of me gazing at three different spots he pointed at on the window frame. The instruction was to try to be expressionless, which of course made my lips feel a little twitchy. (I imagine the lack of twitching is an important advantage of professional models.) I'm not sure why they didn't hire professionals, if it was about budget and timing or if they wanted to remain true to the original spirit of Young Workers.

The ad is for a "business and opinion" magazine put out by JR - hence, the posters in the trains. The photo isn't in the magazine, though they said it would run in the Nikkei newspaper. It's been up a few days, but everyone I know seems to have stumbled on it at once in the last 24 hours on just about every train line in the city. I've come face-to-face with it only once so far: It was scotch-taped to the wall of the newspaper kiosk on the platform at my stop. The stand was shuttered and nobody was around - I almost peeled it off and took it home. But up close, I flinched at the way I looked in the picture and didn't want it. Dove ads be damned, I don't think a little Photoshop would have hurt anyone. So how do I feel about my picture flapping in the breeze, hurtling through Tokyo above and below ground? A little self-conscious, but mostly very amused. I should have taken taht one when I had the chance. If one happens to fall into anyone's hands, grab it for me?

UPDATE: We swiped one that was still up in a station after the campaign ended. What the heck am I supposed to do with it?

The new color of manners

Old message, new poster

We had "Do it at home," "Do it again," and, last year, the best slogan ever: "!?" (I'm pretending the long, dark year of soft-focus wittle baby animals never happened.) Now we have one of those examples of Japanese, common in slogans, that's so simple it's near impossible to translate: "Manner is heart." Manners are thoughtfulness? Hrm. The big heart frame and little heart that the man is leaving behind as he rushes mannerlessly between the closing doors suggests they were feeling literal with "heart" for "kokoro." This is how iffy words like "heartfully" start to sound right after a while. And then there's the katakana "smart" below. "As you start your new life*, give yourself extra time and go smart!" Again, not too satisfying. Especially because "smart" usually means, confusingly, to be slim. The scoldy part is straightforward: "Jumping on the train at the last minute is dangerous. It causes train delays."
This poster is alright overall, has kind of a benign retro-American feel**. Will these two be recurring characters? Will breaking the manners code always result in leaving a little heart behind? Will the color change every month, or is pink the new yellow? Stay tuned til next month!



*The "new life" thing is because people are graduating and starting new jobs.
**Someone who knows things could probably get more specific about the stylistic reference. Weigh on in if that's you!

The wrong flowers

I bought the wrong flowers. It's not the first time, so I should have recognized the look of concern, the whispered consultation between staff behind the register. "These aren't... a present?"
"Nope, just for me," I said. No fancy ribbons necessary.
"Well... you know that these are something-something flowers..."
"Sorry, they're what-flowers?" They had no roots, which I know are a big no-no for taking to sick people, so that wasn't the problem.
"For an altar. Or a grave. They have a chrysanthemum. Are you planning to use these for an altar or a grave?"
Oh. This.
"Uh, no. But it's okay." Is it okay? I'm in a hurry. It's rush hour and the florist is wedged in a corner of a train station that's under construction. Exposed beams, steel floor plates and taped-up wall coverings make it feel extra claustrophobic and clangy. I just want to take my ¥500-bouquet and get out of there.
"They are meant for an altar or a grave. I wonder if that's okay with you?" she asked again. I can't read the tone, the degree of concern. Was she worried that I didn't understand or offended that I understood and was going to do something heathen with them anyway?
"I understand, and it's okay," I said. I paid and left.
But I wondered if it was okay. Was this a ha-ha, toilet-slippers-in-the-living-room faux pas or a shoes-in-the-house felony? After all this time, there's still plenty I just don't really know.

Disastrous?

Cherry blossom sneak attack

Asymmetrical sakura warfare at Aoyama Cemetery

The steady march of the sakura front this year was more of an overnight ambush. A few warm days brought the blossoms out a week and a half earlier than predicted. There's usually a lot of close watching of the buds, but this year it seems like they exploded all at once on Spring Equinox Day. Hanami parties that have been long scheduled for the second week of April now are more likely to take place on a carpet of mashed up flowers and under leaf buds. This weekend is the perfect hanami weather: it looks warm enough to enjoy some drinks and snacks in the park, but it's probably actually kind of freezing once you're sitting on a plastic sheet on the ground. Just the way people seem to like it. One of my favorite hanami parties was the one that ended up with 20 people relocated to our living room when it started raining. If you insist on mi-ing the hana outside with the crowds, though, this free iSakura app I wrote about three years ago* is still pretty cool for finding a good spot. Just watch your shoes. At the end of one long hanami party, mine were gone.

*I'm rereading that last paragraph, and I have no idea why we shoehorned in those unrelated apps. What was that about?!

Akihabara scavenger hunt

When friends come to visit and want to go Akihabara, I give them a map and send them on their way. Maid cafes, anime, video games, computer parts — none of it speaks to me. So I was surprised to find myself navigating by the glow of a big electronics store and a bank of gashapon capsules to find a shop the other day. My visiting friend hadn't had time to make it to this one store, and had become enamored with some manga-inspired clothes there that he saw online after going back to New York. There's no place else in the world to get this stuff! Part of the reason he hadn't been able to go is that their business hours are between 6 p.m. and midnight, Fridays and Saturdays only. Or so the internet said. Last Saturday night, I found the building and started up the steep stairs. There were signs for the figurine store on the third floor, but nothing beyond that. Just narrow stucco walls and a metal lip, just loose enough to bite, on each step. Wouldn't there be a sign if there were really a famous shop up here? The fourth floor, a non-descript, locked door. One more twist, and there was... something. It seemed we had stumbled onto a storage pile. Except it wasn't a pile. The giant shoes and bike tubing and the plastic alligator were arranged to leave just enough room for a foot on each step leading straight up to the door. It looked like everything might be covered in a heavy layer of dust, but it was all clean. There were postcards freshly taped to the door. (One was an ad for the shop on the first floor. Which seemed backward.) The metal doorknob turned, but the door was bolted. I knocked. Looked around at the junk again to see if there was anything that said this was the right place. A corkboard propped up at waist-height and half-draped in burlap had more postcards for C-list idol shenanigans in the area. 5okai is a bleeding-edge fashion shop whose designers take inspiration from Akihabara street culture. It had to be the place. But there was no sign, no hours, no phone number. There was nothing more we could do but knock again, shrug, and take a few pictures. We climbed back down to street level, the mission a complete failure.

Except that if felt like a complete success. After five years in Tokyo, we go more to places we've been before than places we haven't. Having a reason to see someplace I would never go on my own was great. I'm about to leave one of my jobs. Maybe I should start a Tokyo scavenger service, and I could always have reasons to go to places I don't have any reason to go.

White Day Day

Put a marshmallow on it

Mini Plaza, where they'd had the awesome but underappreciated Zoology Chocolates at Valentine's Day, had a White Day sign in the window, but no designated goods inside. At Andersen Bakery, it was just regular pastry and bread. Around the corner, bingo! A line had formed in front of a cake shop, all men. There were big White Day signs hanging over the counter, and the shop was doing a brisk business in baumkuchen and Tokyo Bananas. It was around 8:30 pm, so it's not unlikely the guys had forgotten and realized they had to come up with something at the last minute. (Hey, no judgement — I grabbed the Valentine's monkey on the way home, too.) Can't help but wonder if the coffee stand next door was similarly caught off guard, with their White Day treat: berry muffins with two plain marshmallows squashed on top. There was no line.

BONUS: What the heck is White Day? And best White Day sign ever, bar none. Maybe best sign ever.