Every so often I get a little kick up the pants that reminds me where I am.
(Click on the image below for a decent size version.)
On Suturday 4th of November, 2006, the Free Hugs Campaign came to Shibuya.
After 3 free hugs and managing to completely confuse them, I gave them a free map and continued with my journey…
and the video appears on YouTube:
Come back home; start to open front door; hear loudspeaker below; peer over railing; there’s a band. It’s not moving. Band starts moving and it’s LOUD! Grab camera; start filming; battery dies.
I have now embarked on a tour of Tokyo.
My guide is a map from the back of a gallery postcard, with all the labels surgically removed.
My starting point is every station on the Yamanote railway line.
I’ve been doing it for 2 days now, and I’m halfway round. I don’t know where the map will take me, but there’s always something interesting to be found at the other end…
Update: this became the Sites of Potentiality: Yamanote Line project.
Shortly after an observation that the art in Japan often happens outside of the art scene, Felicity took me to a toyshop.
By that stage the conversation had moved on to architecture and the toyshop was to be an example of a building that, let’s face it, probably wouldn’t be around for much longer.
Yes the toyshop sold toys. But it also sold customised jeans.
It was a toys and jeans shop.
After purchasing a song book (from the toys and jeans shop) we were invited to have a look upstairs.
To what is the jeans customiser’s studio.
The previous owner had been in the building for 50 years and never used the upper floor. But the jeans customiser had cleared it out. The paper screens were brown with age, and there were ancient newspapers pasted onto the walls.
Bloody marvellous, but I bet it’s Baltic in the Winter.
[Oh, and recently the studio of the toys and jeans shop had also been turned into a tea shop.]
