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

june 14

Roppongi Hills
View from the observation deck on the 52nd floor of the Mori Tower

Mori Art Museum

21-21 Design Sight Museum (Tadao Ando 2007)  No photos allowed inside, but the exhibition is viewable here

The National Art Center (Kisho Kurokawa 2007)

Award ceremony for something or other outside Roppongi Hills Shopping Center

june 13

Walk from Shibuya Station back through Harajuku and Aoyama

Christian Dior Omotesando in the evening.

And another couple rounds of the conveyor belt at Moriichi.  I've eaten here every night we've been in Tokyo...going for the record.