3 June 2009

This morning we had an office visit scheduled at Jun Aoki’s office. He is another really prominent architect in Japan, so I was excited to see his office. We met as a class at the Yoyogi-koen Station and caught the 9:34am train. We made it to Aoki’s office by 10am for our appointment with him, and he fortunately spoke pretty good English. We listened to him discuss a couple of his recent projects, then we were free to look around. I continue to be surprised by the tight working quarters which are common in many of the offices we have visited so far in Japan. There were many polished models on display, so we were able to take many pictures and ask questions about what we saw. We were done with the office visit by 11am, and Don had nothing else planned for us. Norio and I wanted to visit the largest architecture bookstore in the Jimbocho Book District of Tokyo, so we took the subway to the Jimbocho Station. Derrick and Seth headed back to the NOMYC to work on our project. Once in Jimbocho, it was hard for even Norio to navigate his way around. I don’t think I have ever seen that many new and used bookstores before. We had been here one time before with Don, but nothing really looked familiar. Eventually we found Nanyodo Bookstore, and I bought the same boogazine as the Kengo Kuma one, except it was featuring Toyo Ito. I really like Ito’s projects, so I was excited to finally find this boogazine too.
After leaving Nanyodo, Norio was hungry, but I wasn’t. I instead wanted to go back to the Toto Bookstore to buy a book for my friend, so Norio went to get lunch, and I caught the train back to Nogizawa. Eventually we met back up at the NOMYC, and we worked heavily on our design project as a group. For dinner, I actually met up with my Uncle Masaru who lives in Tokyo. He met me at the gate of the NOMYC, and we took the subway to Kappabashi/Asakusa. Since I hadn’t been to Kappabashi before, he wanted to make sure I at least visit that area since it is known at Tokyo’s Food District. We wandered around, and there were many kitchen supply stores. Eventually we wandered into the Asakusa area and sat down at a tempura place. I thought it was really expensive, but he didn’t seem to mind at all. My meal came with a plate of tempura (jumbo prawns, squid, potato, green beans, and jalapeño pepper), rice, two types of tsukemono, miso soup, and green tea for 2,300 yen! It was really good, and the jumbo prawns were by far the largest ones I had ever seen in my life. I was completely full by the end of the meal! We walked around the markets outside of Asakusa Temple, but many of them were closing since it was after 6pm. Uncle Masaru really wanted to buy me some snacks for my room, so we eventually found a small store called Rusk. Rusk sold small baguette-like pieces of bread which were sweet and came in three different flavors. I tried one sample of each flavor, and they were all really good! He ended up buying me a 12-pack with all three flavors in it. I was so grateful! Since it was getting later and I had work to do, we headed back to the NOMYC on the subway. Once back at the NOMYC, I showed him my room and living accommodations, and he was additionally able to meet Norio. I walked him to the Sanjubashi Station, since he had to catch the subway back to his home near Ikebukuro. I grabbed some tea on the way back to my room, since it was going to be another late night of working.
I’m really glad I was able to meet up with Uncle Masaru today. I was somewhat worried about the language barrier being an issue, but his Japanese was pretty good and much better than his writing in emails. He is planning to meet me at the front gate on my last day at the NOMYC, so I now feel confident that we are both on the same page as well. This program is coming to an end really quickly, and I am really looking forward to meeting my Grandma’s other brothers and sister when I travel to Nagano next week.