Ruby /// Love, like or hate

After 14 hours sleep I feel considerably more human and have lost the feeling that I'm on a boat.

(number 77 to minami-aoyama 5-chome)

I caught the bus to minami aoyama 5-chome from my home-stay which makes me feel very much at home, although it's not as fast as the subway the view is great. When I've been to Tokyo before I've stayed in Yanaka which is a very quiet area with shrines and old houses - one of the only places unaffected by the bombing and earth quake. Shiroganedai is much more modern with a lot of urban redevelopment. It's really enjoyable to get to know some where new.

(Omoto Sando crossing)

After some exhibition planning, and a goobye to François I went exploring in Omoto Sando. Went to the 360 gallery which is a small space showing new photgraphers work. They are especially interested in Fluxus work and had stuff by joseph beuys, weber and yoko ono. The show was icelandic sea scapes, beautiful big prints.

(360 degrees gallery)

I then went to the spiral which is where the Canon awards cermony was in December last year. It's an amazing building with cafes, record shops, gallery and exhibition halls. The show was tokyo uni design degree show. really amazing, attention to detail work. The show was really slick and looked like it had a budget no Uk degree shows have. Most in Japan are commercialy sponsored.

(spiral)

Back to Muse and more exhibition planning. We are going to meet the electricians tomorrow, basically the space is completely site specific and has no electricity so we are designing the layout to fit in a generator. We finished the graphics / posters and sent them to printers. I now want to find somewhere which produces vinyl lettering, should be interesting with my japanese.

I have to check my prononciations - today I made 2 classic mistakes:

1. I complimented my landlady on her house and told her it was karai desu ne, which means despised / hated. I meant kirei - beautiful.

2. I went into the chemists to explain that my back was hurting, and did they have anything for it. I said watashi no sakana wa warui desu, which means my fish is bad, I should have said sanaka - back.

doh, must try harder.

I don't think my land lord yusumau san was too offended, they have invited me to watch them making soba noodles next week, and they offered to take me to see fuji-san, mount fuji. fuji-san de yumi ga fute imas. It's snowing there at the moment.

Finally made it to the supermarket and got my groceries. It's called the garden and is beautiful and very expensive. i managed to spend £50 on 4 carrier bags of food. Fresh fruit and veg is totemo takai desu - very expensive. £2 for a big apple. Saying that everything else is about the same price as the uk. I had a choice of about 20 different kinds of tofu and miso, fantastic.

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