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24 FEB 99
Veggin' Out at the Big Udon
I'm waiting for the train from the JR Station to take me to the shuttle line. It's rush hour. Actually it's clogged hour - it's impossible to rush anywhere. And I'm not talkin' cars and freeways! The scariest part is thinking about getting to the top of the escalator at the train platform. People are queuing up in neat twin rows behind circular and triangular floor markings near the track edge. One pair of symbols designate where the doors to the express will come to a stop, the other pair marks the local's doors. Me, I feel like a pair of squares, 'cause I'm still not sure which is which.
Think about it - if I can't connect basic symbols like circles and triangles with expresses and locals, how can I connect Kanji characters with meaningful words?
But back to the top of the escalator - when the trains pull up, the lines ripple apart while the exiting passengers run the gauntlet between them. Then the lines get vacuumed into the innards of the train from either side of the doorway. It's really very neat. And very organized. True civility in the face of adversity. Well, I really don't know about the "true" part, but it certainly gives every outward appearance of civility. And perhaps, that is the point - subjugating inner urges so as not to tear the social fabric is the essence of civility and civilization. Motive becomes inconsequential, form is everything.
Manners may seem superficial and artificial, but they do eliminate the need of assessing the intent of strangers, so long as they adhere to protocol. Which is why I love to skate at the edge of civility - insults with a smile; stating the blatant within a veil of obscurity; finding humor in the tragic; and vice-versa - it stretches the social fabric without tearing, it challenges all to check their premises. (i.e., a favorite: "I'm not prejudiced. I hate everyone equally".)
Anyhoo - these queues stretch across the platform. When a train pulls in, the density is doubled, as those exiting plow between the waiting lines, and seek out the stairs to below. The danger on the escalator is that the people coming off the top may be blocked from going anywhere, where the conveyor belt keeps delivering people to the top. This is where civility almost does a duet with panic.
Now the train is pulling into one of the stations. Right outside the window is a window proclaiming the presence of a "Bakery and Cafe". It's named "Pumpkin Poo". You've heard of thousand year old eggs - I suspect this is the pumpkin scoopings equivalent. Maybe it's even stirred in with some mayonnaise and left out in the sun for a few days.
Think about it.
At the office I'm shuffling electrons into patterns of pixels - into words that move mountains -or maybe move dirt into darkness, and night into never - and the big bang recurs when the cursor hits Start. I love this e-mail stuff: I paint ideas with photons; scatter seeds of thought across EMF fields; rain oblivion on others with an "X" and a beep. This is "Space Invaders" at the adult level or "Tetris" without the visuals.
Fergus and I get a lift to Kajima's offices where we meet regarding Back to the Future. The questions, as in almost all sessions, revolve around information not yet obtained from show vendors - or clarification of information that has been received. It almost seems that every time I provide assurances, or information that gives assurances, to Kajima, I feel that much less secure in the validity of what is provided, and in the unchangeability of that information.
Lunchtime arrives. We head back to the canteen in eager anticipation of gustatory delights.
What could I have been thinking? Where do I get these sudden outbursts of optimism? Especially here, where the nail that sticks up is pounded down hardest. As I sit at the table, I can't remember the other offerings - they're a blurry zoo of dismembered beasts. I have Minestrone with Mystery Might Be Meat nodules lurking amidst the slurry at the bottom. I endure. However, I do have to pass on the salad. Again, there's this thing about this weird white stuff on the bananas. It doesn't look presidential, but one never knows.
Back to Kajima and questions regarding the Triangle Buildings. Here we are, grown adults from opposite sides of the earth, brought together to discuss the provisions needed to house a 10+ meter high inflatable monkey. Where else but in show business?
At 4:30, we take the train back to Umeda for a tour of the Hal-Mode building. Kajima is the designer/builder. This is a twenty-story high-rise Romeo and Juliet building - Hal, done in rectangular silver and blue, is a computer school; Mode, is a fashion school done in angled rose. The building is a collision of a basic square planned office tower colliding with another one that is chamfered from a skinny wedge at the top to a square base at the bottom. Near the middle, a giant ball hovers above the glassed-in lobby. The sphere reveals itself to be a representation of Earth, approximately 20m in diameter. Except that the North Pole is down, and all the landforms are beige, except one: a red Japan. Unbeknownst to the casual visitor, the globe contains the main lecture hall.
When we arrive, we descend to the second basement, using the automobile ramps at the back. Mind you, this is still a construction site, but down here, we have to take off our shoes, and don slippers. I go in my stockinged feet - slippers here don't come in 13EEEEE. We take an elevator to the top. The 20th floor is taken up by the assembly hall, which has a panoramic view to the front, back, and one side. The floor has several broad platformed risers and a low stage with a runway for models. Their backdrop will be the city lights to the north.
We descend the stairs as we tour exposed ceiling classrooms with surveillance cameras in each, smoking rooms with stainless steel kitchen-style hoods built into the ceilings large enough to exhaust students that would forget to fasten their seat belts, conference room, interview rooms, sewing rooms, etc.
Elevators are available. And I'm in my stockinged feet. But no, they want me to think about it.
Eventually, we get to the command center in the basement, and then back to the comfort of shoes. We tour the outside, where "Area Development" has tried to fit an abstract history of the universe into a sliver of space between the Hal-Mode building and a high-rise hotel under construction next to it. Of course, I exaggerate, but it does seem a bit busier than the space warrants.
But it does make you think about it.
We say our thank-yous, our good-byes and our good-nights. It really is a stimulating, thought provoking project. As a designer, there is no escaping the could-of-beens and should-of-beens that the imagination keeps conjuring up. But the fact of the matter is that a metaphoric statement was made, and at a very stripped budget. Perhaps the designer did not specifically have Romeo and Juliet in mind when he developed this metaphor for the relationship of the masculine to the feminine. Shakespeare's lovers came to a tragic end - here the two consummate their love in a momentous act of creation. Where the two masses converge, they give birth to the sphere. It is men and women, together that create this world and give it meaning. How life and mind-affirming this is! How stimulating, as opposed to the proposition that we are but biological products of this earth's evolution - that our instincts are still in the trees, that our minds are on what is below others’ navels.
Back at the hotel, I look out the window. Virtually across this street, the Hal-Mode building rises to just below my horizon. The sun is setting and the lighting crews are positioning the floodlights on the face of the soon-to-be-opened structure. The floods wash this way and that, bringing out texture and reflectance, hot-spots and back-lit auras. It's good to see minds at work - experimenting, assessing, modulating - working to bring out the essence within.
I call Ross regarding dinner. He's hungry, but he's waiting for another call. I'll call him back in a half-hour.
I think about the drama that metaphoric buildings can convey - not the drama of an Arthur Miller, or Edward Albee, but the slow inevitability of ancient Greek theater. Oedipus comes to mind. Then I scan the Mainichi Daily News, and there on page 4B:
Japanese stabs self in eye with chopstick
TAIPEI (AP) - a Japanese tourist accidentally lodged a chopstick into his eye socket while eating a bowl of instant noo- dles, but doctors said on Monday that he will retain his sight. Satoshi Kitnoshida, 48, was recovering at National Taiwan University Hospital after doctors removed the chopstick, which had penetrated three centimeters into his right eye socket early on Sunday. The chopstick did not puncture the eyeball, eliminating any immediate danger of blindness, although Kinoshida will be hospitalized for a week as a precaution against infection, said hospital optometrist Chen Wei-li. Kinoshida told journalists that he tripped in his Taipei hotel room while fixing a cup of tea during his morning meal of noo- dles, inadvertently poking the chopstick into his eye socket.
After a while, we decide to go anyway. I make a suggestion, he counters with another that sounds better. We meet up in the tunnels, and head north on the Midosuji line to the Esaka station. We go off the north end of the station and head west. After a block, we turn south a short block, then west again. In a half block, we come to Asperge, a quite good Italian restaurant that Linde, Sevak and I ate on our last trip.
We double back to the Tokyu Hands, go to the third, top floor, where I proceed to buy up all of their stock of VW miniatures. As if the five real ones we have at home aren't enough. Meanwhile, Ross is ogling the variety of tools on display - this would be a gold-mine for Sears, if they ever wanted to become sophisticated.
We work our way down, and go out the south end of the store. Across the street to the west, and just a bit north is our dinner destination, Tucci Benucch (06) 6821-8050. Apparently there are four locations for this mini-chain that is part of the Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Inc. empire. On the outside, part of their signboard is a meter-and-a-half diameter dimensional tomato. We go down below the street level into the lobby. Just past the cashier, on the way to the restrooms, is a wine rack that holds a selection larger than what can be found on the menu. We are seated in a dining room that can seat well over a hundred - cavernous by Osaka standards. The theming is pretty decent - suggestively restrained, rather than overdone and toon-like.
We are seated and handed a menu in English. We order arrancini (rice croquettes), and a tomato and eggplant dish as appetizers. Both are quite good. Now comes a garden salad. I think the chef has been listening too much to a particular Beatles song, 'cause this garden has octopus, tuna, and sardines growing in it. For an entree, I wander across the threshold of vegan ambiguity and order the pasta with eggplant and ground beef. As expected, the beef is virtually nonexistent, but the sauce is stimulatingly zestier than a straight marinara. Ross has a dinner "seto" (i.e.: soup or salad, entree, beverage, dessert), and we share a mildly sweet Muscat - it's a wine, not a fricasseed feline. I smooth out my after-dinner palate with a tiramisu - here it is much airier and is mostly whipped cream with virtually no mascarpone. I thank Ross for his suggestion, since it is the best Italian I've had on this trip.
It's started to rain as we head across the street to the station. We're both so lazy, we walk the length of the station to ascend via the elevator, rather than hike up a set of stairs. Being a foreigner is great - almost everything is excusable.
We take the train back to Osaka station. I suggest we go up to the Windows on the World, the sky lounge at the Hilton, since this is Ross's last evening for a while. Over at the Ritz, where he is staying, their equivalent to the "sky lounge" is on the fifth floor - which puts you about five floors below the lowest building around the place. The view with the city lights glistening below is like a reflecting pool for the galaxy of stars above. We have a cocktail each while munching on those incredible glazed walnuts studded with sesame seeds. With all of this luxuriant atmosphere, scenery, service, etc., etc., around, what else are we going to talk about but the day-to-day work that needs to be done in the weeks ahead.
We think about how it can be better.
Somewhere out there, out the other side of the building, lighting crews are playing lights over the features of an office building masquerading as two schools. And here we are, office people masquerading as to two fools. Or, is it really form dreamers costumed as two cube dwellers. Whichever, we talk, we hope, we close the place out. Like Hal and Mode, for the past two-plus years we have been creating this limited world for others to live in. The sun is setting. I'm ready for the lighting crew, Mr. Preminger.
Think about it. |