antique manekineko

a wonderful night with my favorite person in the world-katzu, and jeff, same place we really like, respekt, the internet and western inspired lounge with good music and great staff. i spent most of the evening fawning over poor katzu, embarassing him, cooing over him. it's just that i do not meet people like that very often and i can't help myself! he's amazingly generous, kind and considerate. also very fun and has one of the best personalities i've ever known. sorry, katsu, that i'm announcing my feelings publicly, but that's just the way i tend to write.

got to wake up at a luxurious noon!!! today, and off to shimokitazawa again for eats and shopping. i found an antique japanese toy shop that blew my mind totally. thousands of old japanese toys, 45 rpm records, albums, dolls, kitch, robots and amongst all of this stuff, my manekineko!!! i've been searching for the "lucky cat"-you know, the one with the raised paw that is in all japanese restaurants, but i do not like the new ones with the right paw raised. they do not have the same character as the antique ones. cheesy, not much attention to craftsmanship. the story behind that one is a long time ago, a man who had a business that was doing very poorly and could not feed himself was visited by a hungry kitten, so he fed it even though he could not feed himself. and his business began to boom. at least that's the story i have heard. so the manekineko, or the lucky cat, has become a sort of "god" here in japan. the raised paw is to lure customers into the shop. it's a tiny one, but absolutely beautiful and i am very happy to have an antique one for my yoga studio. which will be indian and japanese inspired, with the curtains in japanese printed fabrics (julie-maybe you can help me with that one?) the kitty has a history i am not aware of. perhaps it sat in a ramen shop in shinjuku in the 1950s! who knows!

and we played food roulette, which means just pointing to a line of words and wondering what food you will receive, since there were no pictures or english anywhere. i ended up getting a kick ass sandwich with cheese topped with an over easy egg! i like that game! shimokitazawa was like a dream come true for jeff, because it's filled with used record stores, punk clubs, dvds and cds, not to mention an amazing amount of hat stores, something i also am very much into. there's nothing better than a good original hat collection!

tonight we are going to "lush" a rock club 5 minutes walk from the apartment to see supersnazz and the romanes, an all girl tribute to the ramones. supersnazz is also a girl band, one of the members we had met in goa a few years ago and shared a taxi with, and the bass player, tomoko, had a song written about her by our friends the returnables (the lead singer was killed a year ago when a girl tried to commit suicide by ramming her car into his-and i used to play in a band with his wife). so jeff is making a cd of this song to present to her at the show. and only 2000 yen entrance fee, not bad, not bad at all.

we have to be out of our apartment from 8am until 4 tomorrow because it's used for another business. it's not hard to figure out what to do. ginza, akihabara, shinjuku, kichijoji, ueno...easy to waste 8 hours. i can't wait. another 3 weeks to go and i'm finally home. and finally beginning a brand new life with astangayogachicago.com!