my tokyo

*an image each week of the tokyo I experience

i heart monchichi

I do. I love monchichi. Last week we visited Asakusa where we found some funny toy shops full of them! Purple, pink, dressed up, dressed down, wedding, shogun, you name it. I kept sighing over them and saying how much I like them. Well, my lovely husband secretly bought me one and surprised me later! So awesome! This one is designed by Shinzi Katoh, one of my favorite artists/designers, so he has a Shinzi Katoh shirt and little jeans. Have I now joined the ranks of many blogging women who collect dolls of some kind or other? Like this? Or this? Or THIS? I don't know, but bobei is smitten too and now would like her own monchichi for Christmas. Perhaps this is the start of a monchichi family...? Stay tuned.

this is on tokyo craigslist!

Uroko-ya bookshelf igloo for sale - JPY500000 (Minato-ku)


"Own a unique piece of furniture, created by 2 Tokyo architects in 2007.
Called the Uroko-ya ("uroko": "fish scale" referring to the felt tiles covering it and "ko-ya": small room) it has been used as a bed "igloo" inside our studio for the past 3 years and featured in countless design mag and websites.

We now have a little kid who loves to run around and needs more floor space for his toys, so we are selling it.

It includes a lot of shelf space for books or items (more than 24m over 6 shelves), a wardrobe area and an entrance.
It would make a perfect small kids sleep/play room, a shop display, a study or a quiet reading room.
But it's been a great bedroom for us too. It fits a 160cm wide bed (200 length) with room to walk around it.

The 4 bottom shelves are 36~33cm tall and easily fit big art books (higher ones are shorter)
The wardrobe area has 4 doors on the outside and can also be accessed from inside (175 tall, 180 wide including 2 hanging rails)
The entrance is 175 tall and 60 wide
It includes a little side table, 76.5 high
and a seating area close to the entrance.

Floor space needed: 3m x 3m10

It's all made in smooth and light-colored "Shina" plywood. 15mm thick. Treated with a light coat of clear matt varnish.
Nice and soft to the touch.

Price includes delivery in central Tokyo and the re-building of the igloo in your home.
You can have the felt tiles too, but as you can see from the photos below is it a very adaptive structure that would be happy to be dressed differently.

More photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/in-duce/sets/72157624860919735/
The world talking about it: http://www.google.com/search?q=uroko+bed

Price is negotiable."

SWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON

my tokyo

*an image each week of the tokyo I experience.

found via 8tokyo.com

"Every day a mother prepares BENTO containing a message for her high school son. If he obtained bad grades in a test, she would include a message that said “Try harder!” by making TONKATSU BENTO (because in Japan “win” is pronounced as “katsu”); when she saw him walking with his girlfriend, she would make a BENTO with a heart in it; but finally came the day for his last BENTO.

The last BENTO was the same as the very first BENTO that she made. As she was about to wash the dishes, she opened the BENTO box and a note from her son came out that said “Sorry for not being able to say thank you until now.”

i like

the river that runs through this concrete island

flowers blooming in fall

hibiscus remind me of grammy

I feel her smiling on me

I think she would say its ok

the way things are right now

the way things have been

I want to return to the sun-filled place

baking imaginary muffins with her

so safe

so loved

a good feeling.

dance-a-long

tonight we danced to papa's new album. you can download it for free, we'll have an international dance party. http://soundcloud.com/gejius/sets/free

FREE (yeah, it's actually free) by Gejius

This album features our raddest friends from America and Japan. Hearing their voices is like hugging them, or better yet, fist pumping with them in my living room. I love it. I hear the bridges of Portland and the concrete of Tokyo, fir trees and city rivers, hours of train rides with a keyboard on his back, a Glass Moustache, a Botanist, a HondaLady, everything we left behind and the beat of right now. Bobei is a definite fan. She is an electronic kid. How many 4 year olds do you know who sing Julie?

morning

This is just a practice for this weekend. And yes, that's a real starter's pistol.

love is a rice ball made just for you