Begginings of New Year

On they way to meet ryan at Suitengu temple. This is a famous hotel i think and its going to be destroyed soon.

before the shrine we went to Tamahide, a restaurant where Oyakodon was invented i guess. Oyakodon is this chicken and egg over rice bowl dish that is super yummy and is usually the first recipe in japanese cookbooks cuz its the easiest thing to make supposedly. The ingrendients they use are top quality though. i guess this line is always here, it was about 15 minute wait.

what it looked like waaay back. its gone through like 7 generations of this same family

good but i guess not good enough to make trip all the way up here unless you're in the area.

ryan buying a fertility charm for his friend back in Beijing. Suitengu is famous for being a shrine for both healthy births and fertility. its says about 100 women a day come to this shrine.

This is a hamaya arrow which is a new years good luck charm that literally means demon breaking arrow. I am getting into the Japanese archery imagery so this arrow charm showed up at the right time.

directly after this i went to the office to sign up for the Japanese National Health Care plan. the guy couldnt speak english so a translater came over. they asked me about the arrow and saw that it was from suitengu and the guy kept saying be careful in japanese and i think he might have been talking about be careful now that you are blessed with extreme fertility with that arrow from Suitengu shrine famous for fertility charms. yikes stupid foreigner buys stupid thing. at least i didnt get it tatooed on my arm

i wonder if most Tokyoites know about this hidden street behind Shibuya 109-2? its called nonbei yokocho and has tons of those little bars with room for only 6 people. Cool area you should check it out. its a smaller version of golden gai in shinjuku.

Shintaro bought a bike. the pic doesnt show this well but this thing is big. very high too. looks dangerous.

am i in china again. wats up with this guys jacket? "I feel the sound of the bubbling stream of the river tripping".

went to the tobacco and salt museum in shibuya across the street from where my parents hotel is gonna be in june. they had a Ukiyo-e exhibition but they also have a permanent salt and then tobacco exhibition too which is pretty cool. the old japanse cigarette packaging was off the hook!

I bought this matchbox. a reproduction but i like these Shishi guys.

Me and Akari tried to boost our luck in the new year by visiting these 6 shrines dedicated to the 7 lucky gods. Ebisu is one of them. he is the only one of japanese origin, the rest are chinese or indian i think. There are many "trails" that date back to the Edo era, of shrines to visit for good luck. This was the most popular and famous one.

kagami mochi. rice cakes, two stacked up for the new year for some reason they do this.

I want these guys. these are the 7 lucky gods. there is this racket where you collect stamps from each temple until you have all 7 stamps. but the stamps cost 300 yen each. So we said F that we're not gonna pay 2100 yen for all that. I just want those guys but they cost too much.

we are dumb and we started at 4:30pm. it got cold and dark. this was the 2nd shrine. awesome.

this was the third shrine, it was behind this thing, i guess under construction or even out of commision. who knows. at this point it was cold and dark and this took the wind out of our sails so we gave up and went to go eat.

Opening ceremony at my Japanese school. this was before the room filled up. They divided this big class room into chinese speakers, korean speakers, and "non chinese and korean speakers" (aka, english and everyone else who can't speak english is screwed). this was a huge waste of time. the headmaster and the teachers gave speeches but after ever sentence someone would translate in chinese, korean, and english simultaneously in the set section of the room what was said. My brain was getting all confusy cuz i could understand some of the chinese and korean and english all being said at the same time in diff parts of the room.

8:00am is the earliest i've woken up in 3 months so i need some coffee. hot coffe in a little can.

in the doorway of the Hard Rock Cafe in Roppongi. looks like mick jagger signed it. anyway i thought it was cool brushwork although im not into tigers, and dragons, and yin yangs in the way that 15 year old boys are.

roppongi. this looks like a fine upstanding establishment

japanese movie posters are better than american ones. this is for Ong Bak 2 from thailand, don't know why its being released now since the movie is over a year old i think. have you seen the japanese kill bill posters? so much better.

exactly 1 month after the accident I went for my first run. it wasn't that bad. my body hurts pretty bad but like it should after taking a month off.

illustration!

subway sign. first time ive seen this. kind of weird ne?

My new illustrator buddy Boojil and her buddy. Her website

a girl with a guitar on her way to shimokitazawa and a bourgie woman going home in a fur jacket.


new illustrator buddy Boojil. Her website

her buddy, oops i forgot his name.