june 15

4am call to the Tsukiji Fish Market, the biggest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world, turning over 5.5 billion USD a year.  The fish go up for auction at 5:30. Photos of auction house reps and buyers inspecting bluefin tuna.

Wasabi

6am sushi at a place called Yamazaki

Our chef showing off abalone that are still slithering around

This is why travel books are a drag.  Yamazaki on the left, some other place on the right with a line of foreigners around the corner.   

Tama Art University Library (Toyo Ito & Associates 2007).  No photos inside the library, which was painful to endure, especially once we made it up to the second floor.  There's apparently a nice book on the project (not yet to be found online), and here is a nice set of photos.  This library is off the charts.  Monumental work that doesn't rely on radical symmetry or systematic order at all.  'Even if you can map it out, you can't perceive it out' says Sensai.  Visceral subjective experience.  Mmmm.  The furniture was nice too.

Japan does aluminum bottles

Print ad for Dior. Joe decided he's the gal, Japan is the man who doesn't want him to leave

No elephants throwing cans in Japan

Shinjuku District