Woke up a bit too early this morning and went to the excellent gym at the hotel, but that left me a little tired. I got showered and shook it off to make a quick subway trip to an antiquarian bookstore.
This is the set up for used bookshops, at least in Osaka. All used books, usually a large section of “art books,” bins of cheap old postcards, stacks of old maps, and stacks of old prints (usually reprints of classic ukioy-e block prints picked over to leave the lesser desired prints). There will be a copy of Hokusai’s Under the Wave Off Kanagawa on display for much more, but it is a later reproduction as well. I saw this pattern in several shops.
I did not see this original at the Met in New York earlier this year as it was not on display at the time. Image from Wikipedia.
I was on the hunt for a map or two for my daughter who has been studying (and drawing) maps her whole life and is now in her third year of college studying maps. This shop did not disappoint; it had the largest collection of maps I have seen. I took a half hour looking at every map they had and picked out the two most interesting ones — some of the islands off Okinawa (I think) and Europe. Both of them were at least decades old and, of course, in Japanese. Fun!
Once I rode the subway back and walked from the station back to the hotel (with a stop to get some lunch for us from a conbini (convenience store) I was actually ready for a nap. We ate our lunch and I reclaimed an hour of sleep that I had missed in the morning.
We got ourselves together and walked up to a cool little area called Nakazaki. Apparently an artist and dancer named Jun Amanto was one of the folks who lead the revitalization of this neighborhood in the early 2000s into the cool and hip neighborhood it is now. Reminds me of a certain artist and dancer who got on Eureka City Council, leads a local art organization, and is leading (with others) the revitalization of Eureka as a hip arts community.
Nakazaki was spared from the destruction of the Second World War and thus still has older wooden buildings, narrow steeets, and loads of charm. There are small time artist cooperative galleries, different varieties of food options (including a Japanese Ayurvedic shop that featured waffles and had on their sign “Let your food be your medicine.” I can get behind that!), and makers of different types.
We got some cool T-shirt’s and socks at one small shop and a few bags at this amazing little shop tucked in an old building. The woman there works with a designer to make these canvas bags right there in the shop. They are amazing. Treated with paraffin wax they are water resistant and (bonus!) they are reversible. Amanda and I had to return to buy some as gifts. She was particularly intrigued by my octopus sweatshirt by Eureka’s Nothing Obvious.
In between our trips to the bag shop (despite my better judgment) we stopped at Doo Doo’s Soufflé (a little doggie was their mascot) where Amanda had a latte and I had an iced melon milk. They were good but I would have preferred mine to be more icy, or slushy. Like I said, though, it was good. I was trying to look cool in the photo, not disappointed by the drink.
On the way back we ventured into the subway station mall which is huge. It was packed, but we found our way to the row of four (count ‘em! Four!) little bookshops next to each other it this mall. We were exhausted so we just sped through the GIANT new bookstore across the way for from the row of used shops. The giant shop was extremely busy on a Sunday night.
This is the first of the four shops to my left here, picture taken from the direction of the new shop by Amanda, of course, as are all the good shots on this trip.
By now the sun had set and so on the way back to the hotel we started looking for food. I ended up in yet another mall (there are about five of them all next to each other because there are huge hotels, conference centers, and two large subway stations that serve multiple lines). In this mall there is a food court so I tried eating with the masses in Japan.
My choice was MOS Burger which is Japan’s second largest fast-food franchise (after McDonald’s). Here’s what I had:
That veggie burger is as small as it looks. Te beverage is Lemon White Peach Soda. The fries were a good standard, but instead of ketchup, I was given a packet of basil tartar sauce. It was all actually delicious. Since I had that milk drink earlier, the size of the burger was fine. I’m sure that fresh avocado on top of the burger also helped.
I was not brave enough to try this:
MOS Burger is big time and part of their success is making the food to order; I did have to wait quite a while for my order as it was BUSY!
One fun thing about MOS Burger is that the MOS is a backronym for “Mountain, Ocean, Sun.” Founder Atsushi Sakurada’s previous company was called Merchandising Organizing System and the burger biz was a spinoff of that company. Even though he hasn’t explained what Mountain, Ocean, Sun has to do with burgers, that’s the story he’s telling. I love backronyms and retcon (retroactive continuity) when deployed well. We make the stories we need.
After all that we were too tired to go on a boat ride. We just relaxed the rest of the evening and I will try to get some better sleep tonight. Tomorrow is our last full day in Japan!
