2 June 2009

I woke-up this morning at 9:00am to make sure I had enough time to get ready and turn in my sheet on-time. Don messed up on the schedule a bit, so we were actually supposed to have turned in our sheets two days ago, so we got a bit delayed on turning in our sheets. Afterwards, we walked as a group to the Yoyogi-koen Station and caught the 10:46am train to Nogizawa. We headed to Gallery Ma, one of the most prestigious architecture display galleries in Japan. Klein Dytham Architect’s work was being showcased in the gallery, and Astrid Klein actually met us there to talk about her and Mark Dytham’s work. The exhibit was two stories, and it was really interesting to see how successful foreigners could be in Japan. Both Astrid and Mark had graduated from college in Europe and immediately moved to Japan with no real plan in mind. They both attained jobs at Toyo Ito’s office, which is incredibly hard to do as a foreigner. They eventually started their own firm, and this exhibition in Gallery Ma was celebrating their 20th anniversary of architecture in Japan. After viewing the gallery and talking with Astrid, we went to the Toto Architecture Bookstore located one level below the gallery in the same building. I continue to love the architectural bookstores here since there are so many books that I cannot buy when I’m in the U.S. Many people bought many books, but I settled on one “boogazine”, which is a hybrid between a book and a magazine. It featured only recent works by Kengo Kuma, whose office we visited just last week. The cover had the model from the competition they won recently for an orchestra hall, and the project architect had actually discussed the project with us when we were at Kuma’s firm.
After finalizing our purchases, Don invited Norio, Derrick, and I to get some lunch with him. We found a very reasonable tonkatsu restaurant, and I ordered tonkatsu over rice and curry for 580 yen. It was really really good, especially for the price. I am really going to miss all of the good food for such cheap prices when I return to the U.S. We were all pretty tired after lunch, so we headed back to the NOMYC. Once back at the NOMYC, we couldn’t figure out what we wanted to do. It is supposed to rain the rest of the week, so I wanted to take advantage of the beautiful sunny weather. Derrick and Norio were too tired to even go out, so I decided to go out on my own to explore. I had been wanting to visit Nakano for quite some time now, and since no one else was really interested in going there, I decided today was a great opportunity. I hoped on the train without really knowing the best way of getting there, but I eventually got there just fine. The main attraction in Nakano is the shopping arcade, so I wandered through there. I went into a UniQlo, and the jeans I’ve been looking at were actually on sale. I’ve been waiting for the past month for the jeans to go on sale, and I had never seen them on sale anywhere, so I definitely bought them. The great thing about UniQlo too is that they hem your pants for free. I paid for them, and they said the pants would be ready in 20 minutes. How convenient! I wish all stores in the U.S. did that too. Nothing else really stood out as amazing in Nakano. I just took a lot of pictures of signs and buildings that said Nakano, and I enjoyed the nice weather. I picked-up my jeans on the way back to the station and got back to Sanjubashi Station around 7pm. I picked-up some somen at the convenient store and spent the rest of the evening working on my studio project.