End of Golden Week: Vissel+Tokyo

On Thursday, went to another Vissel Kobe game. Yoji had decided we were going to be wear shirts to spell out "Leandro", one of Vissel's best players, and when you write it in Katakana it's レアンドロ but when you want to say it like LEAAAAAANDRO you put a ~ in it, to be レア~ンドロ and I was the "~". When he did something good on the pitch we got on the screen. Woo! The atmosphere was wicked as it was Golden Week so the stadium was at near capacity, and we were playing Gamba Osaka, who are one of the strongest teams in J1, and Vissel really raised their game, best I've seen them play. The match was really exciting but ended in a draw at 2-2.


On the weekend went up to Tokyo. Maho had organised a lunch meet up for like 9 of us who'd been at Notts and we ate at a Monsoon Cafe in Shibuya, was cool. Met a couple of people I hadn't before and caught up with those I hadn't seen for too long. Then after that we went from Shibuya down to Aoyama, checking the Tadao Ando designed Omotesando Hills on the way. It's nice... but kind of crowded. It's got a bit more soul than Tokyo Midtown, with a central spiral idea, but still not as nice as little shops spilling on the the street individually.



They had a really cool exhibition in the basement about album artwork, loads of LPs up around the walls, and giant murals made of blown up album art. On the tables in the middle were famous and hard to find Japanese ones and hanging around the walls were ones from around the world. Heard Clara Hill in there! It was cool picking out albums just from the giant artwork, had really cool stuff in there, like the Sonny Clark Trio along with Marvin Gaye, Run DMC, Miles as well as the stuff you'd expect like the Sex Pistols, Bowie etc. Loved it.



The we wandered round Aoyama a little, I was looking for design shop ±0 but never found it unfortunately.



Managed to check the new flagship UT store in Harajuku (the new tee shirt line from Uni Qlo I was going on about in the last post), they have loads more there than normal UniQlos, and they all come in cool capsules from vending machine-like shelves on the wall. Very cool. Picked up a 'corporate collaboration' (only in Japan is selling out a good thing) of a design based on Mitsuya Cider, a soft drink. The store has a cool feel, loads of scrolling info screens.



Wandered over to Shibuya, I love this pic of Yuto looking rather badass as Shino just looks cute in the background, and passed a sign for what must surely be the most boring museum ever (of course we didn't go in.)



Just before dinner headed to a little gallery space called Nanzuka Underground, with the coolest logo ever. Look on the right, if you know it's called Nanzuka Underground, it leaps off the page at you, but when you look closer and see how it's actually written, you sort of read it in all kinds of directions. Anyway there was an exhibition called 'A Series of Interpreted Catharsis' about earthquakes, basically photos and videos of very glossy looking models pretending to be normal people as an eartquake happened, and exhibits of broken LPs, CDs, plates and LaserDiscs. Enjoyed the unusual glossy spin put on the idea of an earthquake. Was cool.



After, went off to an izakaya where we drank all we could for a couple hours with the obvious results. Then me, Nori and Yuto hit some club somewhere a couple of stops away - couldnt tell you where - where we jumped around to brit indie til 6 in the morning. The music was just like Rescue Rooms last year, dropped your Arctic Monkeys and your Mylo of course, was great, could almost see the silhouette of Ali in the corner. I kind of fell asleep during the middle of a phone conversation... and I think I slept in the street for a couple of hours when I popped out to get a snack at a conbini which resulted in me having this bad cold and having to take Wednesday off, but was a throwback to Uni and big fun. Parted ways with Nori and Yuto the next morning ("you're a mess" was Yuto's verdict) to rest and shower in a capsule before heading out again to Aoyama with Shino.

We went to a really nice cafe, AtoZ cafe, designed by Yoshitomo Nara together with graf. The place is all done out in white old worn looking wood, the chairs don't really match, in the middle they have a small dark wooden house full of Nara's artwork which you peer through the window at (similar to the exhibition graf designed for him in the art museum in Kanazawa) and a small space of pics stuck to the wall showing pics of Nara's and graf building the cafe. We sat in a little hut like room eating Japanese sweets with a twist. Great place.



Shinkansen back to Osaka. I love Tokyo :o)