_valerian

past few days:

Went to an apartment designed by Tadao Ando across the street from the Tokyo Art Museum with my friend Nara to see a photo slide show by a famous photographer whose name I forgot, and there next to that photographer was none other than Jun Itoi running the laptop which the slide show depended on. Once the lights came back on I was suprised to see Atsuko Hirota there as well. At the party/reception afterwards I met for the first time Taeko Jingu. After that Atsuko, Nara and I along with a photographer with a Canon Eos 1s whatever 8 thousand dollar digital camera around his neck, a high school teacher who convinced me that I do indeed need a Leica M5 after he showed me his, and a Tokyo University graduate who is now employed at Canon and helped engineer their recent image non-shakeable lenses. You can tell I know nothing about Canon cameras, and even the engineer said he liked Nikon better. We all headed to Shimo-kitazawa to a small french resturant for dinner. One foot in the door and I knew that I was not going to get away with out leaving a significant portion of my wallet’s innards in the register. 5000 yen… I promise you that I did not eat 5000 yen worth of bread or salami. This is the deal that one who does not drink alcohol in a country gets where dinner tabs are split evenly amongst the participants. After that Nara, Atsuko and I headed over to Cafe Yuitto in Shinjuku, which made it my third trip there in three days.

Saturday I left my card in a Shinjuku Mizuho bank ATM. This was noticed today, Tuesday morning when I went to the local ampm ATM. This has been resolved though.

The Moriyama, Shinjuku, Araki photo exhibition is amazing. I plan on seeing it again.

What else? Oh, other things too. Thats for later though.

This is what I started with last Wed. night, the result of about an hour’s worth of painting from the week before. I actually kind of liked it.

30 minutes and a can of coke later I came up with this. Not liked as much by me.

Finally this is what I left in Tanaka Sense’s studio. A rather muddled and clumsy piece. Going to hit it again this week. I prefer the spontaneity of the original and with the help of modern technology I can refer back to my keitai photo to see how to get back on the right track.

some recent random digital photos

here is how to get noticed in a bank in Japan-

First, look flustered in the bank lobby (while being a balding American) and mutter things. THEN, loud enough for everyone nearby to hear, say “jee-zus Christ”.
After the lobby lady comes up to help you you really ought to start complaining in rapid english. Follw up your snideness with some Japanese in the most nasally American accent you can. Doushite? Doushite? (Why, Why?) should be pronounced “dOUgh-shitei, dOUgh-shiteii? Make sure that you switch the usually Canadian-esque “eh” at the end with the more American “ei” sound for best results.

Awesome.