MGO3, Day 6 & 7: Every instrument is a drum if you play it wrong enough
Hit me like a hammer
Talking points: How to afford everything, What is art, Is it a bar that serves coffee or a cafe that serves cocktails, Lauryn Hill is the GOAT
The woman with the raccoon tail stands on a cinder block to comfortably reach her array of devices. Some I recognize from YouTube or my own collection, and some look homebrewed in a garage. Which is fitting because forestlimit, the music venue I bookmarked 5 years ago and am now staying around the corner from, resembles a mechanic’s den given over to gigantic speakers.
And then with a smile she pummels us with noise.
Just before this aural assault I was standing at the counter of Kitchen Kanejô, a tiny natural wine bar I’d noticed on my first day in the area and had managed to miss three days in a row. But I would not be denied. I translated the phrase “I’ll stand anywhere” and walked in.
Kanejo has the signs I’ve come to look for when deciding to take a chance on a French restaurant in Japan. One, it’s run by a couple, and this shared passion for all things French (in people who may have never been to Paris) gives everything a special je ne sais oomph. Two, they’re open the incredibly unhip hours of 4pm to 9:30pm. And three, the menu, entirely in Japanese, nods at French cuisine without being stuck inside a box of it. It’s not (cursed) fusion. It’s inspiration, the kind all the (deeply cursed) “Asian” restaurants of Amsterdam can only dream about.1
So maybe it’s the three glasses of pinot noir, or the warmth of delicious food, or the back-to-back-to-back nights out, but as I sit on a stool taking in the show I feel myself being carried aloft on the waves of sound.
Because I’m falling asleep.
I jolt awake and do a quick glance around, but everyone is too caught up in the spectacle to have noticed me pitching forward. I want to stay—if this is 10pm what happens at midnight—but I know I’ve pushed my limits. (My FOREST limits am I right ok it’s time to go.)
On the 9th floor like it was designed that way
Earlier in the day I meet Japanese David (Who is not Japanese) at Friend In Hand, a cafe in Omotesando tucked into the 9th floor of an… office building? Retail space? Hotel? Possibly all three. Zoning laws in Tokyo seem guided by desire, so you’re just as likely to find an accountant’s office as an international karaoke bar.
He met the owners when they approached him to design their logo, and because you have to yes, and something so outside your wheelhouse (he is not, by trade or even really hobby, a designer), he said yes.
Because we’re both men of a certain age we talk about the balancing of following your passions and paying rent, or in his case providing for a family. This is a pretty common topic these days, and I think most of it falls into a neat bucket of
I Like Having Money x I Don’t Like What I Can Be Paid To Do
which would probably make us Millenial snowflakes if we weren’t in or near our 50s.
Not for the first time in Japan I wonder about the economics of the space I’m in. Readers of the first Mizu! Gohan!! Ocha!!! might remember a restaurateur who confided her monthly rent was the equivalent of €150. Which means for my monthly rent in Haarlem I could have ten restaurants in Japan. Not literally true and yet not not pretty true.
Otherwise
David and I go climbing at B-Pump, the famously hard home to some of the world’s top climbers. The one in Ogikubo is dense, with few routes truly made for beginners. It has the feel of an underground fight club. Showing me the grading chart the staff member says, it’s very hard. You might have heard.
Oh, I’ve heard.
For two hours I get my entire ass handed to me on a plate, while literal children go up routes 4 levels beyond me. And here it would be easy to make a generalization about Japanese culture as evidenced by their approach to climbing. So I will.
More than a few people spent their session on a single route. Again and again, working different parts, honing in on the problem area, finding the sequence and then trying to string it together. The reality of B-Pump is that some of the routes are set with no expectation that anyone, not even world-class Olympians, be able to flash them (climb the route on your first try).
This is born out by the team of route setters working on side of the gym. After finalizing the last hold they’d pull on their shoes and try and “go up”. To be clear, they had just set the route, presumably understanding as they did so what would be involved in climbing them. So it was gratifying (and slightly terrifying) to see them fly off the walls with the same velocity as me, a total hack.
Journey, not destination, keeps flashing in my mind.
To console ourselves we go to the accurately named There Is Ramen, a highly-rated spot minutes from B-Pump,2 where a beautiful human being soothed our pain with delicious, sardine-based broth. There IS ramen, and my god did we eat it.
Furthermore
That evening I meet Matt and Kris in Ebisu, and we end up at Spincoaster, more a music-forward bar than listening bar, which Kris accurately describes as like being in someone’s kitchen.
If I had a kitchen like this, she says, I would totally do this. This is invite over a group of young friends who have an absolute blast mixing 70s funk and r&b with contemporary hip hop into a perfect stew of complete joy. They are having The Best Time and it’s impossible not to get carried along with them.
A couple of Hibikis in I make the brilliant observation that no one likes anything as much as Japanese people like anything. I find this so brilliant I say it twice.
As we spill out into the night Kris wonders if anyone we were partying with were alive when most of the music was released. We all agree this is unlikely. With the possible exception of the man who parked up next to me and asked how I was enjoying the music. The best I say. Hmmm mmm. And what did I think of the mixing? Very smooth I say. Smooth hmmm mmm. Just a vibe I say, and he nods either in agreement or along to the music.
Hmm mmm. A vibe.
The onslaught of Dutch restaurants “inspired by Asian flavors” is culinary colonialism of the tallest order. Hey chef, you didn’t discover sriracha. I’m looking at you, Cafe Wu.
As rated in Ramen DB, the locally-sourced, non-Googled database for all things ramen.