China

One of my favorite place in Shanghai is Lu Xun park (魯迅公園). If you go there in the morning time you can see a lot of old people doing tai chi, social dance and singing. It seems that old people there know how to enjoy thier life after retirement and it is good to have such a place that everyone can enjoy together. In my idea a country where senior ppl living lively(do they look like that only because they have loud voice?) is good country as well as a household where woman is stronger than man is good one. Then I guess China meets both condition.

まあでも日本も町内会の集まりとかは発達しているからやる気さえあればそれなりに老人も楽しめるシステムはそろってるのかな。その点、かえってcanadaとかはあんまりそんな感じがないようにみえた。日曜の朝は電車も動くの遅いし、開いてるのがfast foodくらいしかないから一度朝にKFCに寄って老人ばっかりで埋まってるのにはびっくりしたものね。日曜の教会のお祈りの後に皆でフライドチキン食べるんだろうか。ある意味朝っぱらからあんな脂っこいもの食べられるのであれば健康ってことか。 but when it comes to oily food, that is chinese food. I wonder why Chinese ppl can keep themselves healthy and slender while they eat chinese food every day. or are they really healthy? I should have asked how much stroke rate they got there.

anyway lu xun park is good place to visit. they have nice pond with lotus leaves on it, fringed with willow trees, and also some gardens with theme(like English garden). There is Lu Xun Memorial Museum too and that is quiet place with air conditiner so it's nice spot to rest and read books (the entrance fee is cheap. I don't remember exact amount but around a cup of coffee?).

I'd never read books from 魯迅 before but as this is good chance I started from short stories and I found his books are quite easy to read. 読みやすいね。old homeとかmedicineね。何となく昔の作家は名前からして読みにくいのではないか、と思って手を付けなかったものも多いけど実はそうでないものも多い。Platoとかもそうだった。読みやすいか読みにくいかは単に訳の問題かも。結構頑張って英語で読むようにしてるけど英語で読むといいな、と思うのはfantasy系の童話とか軽いタッチの恋愛もの、ハードボイルドなもの。反対に純文学とか格調高いのは和訳のほうが好き。だから魯迅は日本語で。Dostoevskyの「白痴」など英語では"The idiot"のタイトルだけどどうもしっくりこないなあ。

それよりHarry Potterの松岡祐子さん脱税で話題になりましたが、私自身は彼女の和訳を読んだことないのですが上手とかは別にして、売れる本を訳しただけであんなに儲かるんだ！こうなると自分の腕なんかよりどの本が売れるか目利きすることの方が大切になってきちゃうのではないかなあ。

Happy belated birthday to me!

Thanks for everyone who celebrated my birthday! I had really great birthday week (went out 4 nights in a row since I came back from China...) and it is always fun that friends get together.

素敵な一年にしたいものです。

← isn't this pretty?


←this is the cake I baked for myself. wanted to make strawberry shortcake but the fruit was not available as it is out of season. it's been a long while since I got whip cream separated last time....
anyway isn't this pretty either?

China (food)

It's kind of all of sudden but I was in Shanghai last weekend. When I was talking to my good friend, YangYang from Shanghai on MSN the other day, he was like "why don't you come to China tomorrow? I can show you around". Yeah, China and Japan is getting closer and closer and it takes only 2 and a half hour to go to Shanghai from Tokyo. Visiting foreign country is not that difficult as before and I'm lucky to be born this generation.
Anyway I couldn't get the air ticket the next day so I departed one week after. China....the country with the largest population, the country developing with the incredible speed... and of course the country with the richest food culture.

The first thing I was shocked about that country is its traffic manner. There is noooo traffic rule and they are doing better without it. There was no priority for pedestrians but it seems that they are having less traffic accident than Tokyo. That's kind of unfair.....
But in the morning I can get up with much honking noise and that makes me think I'm in really "Asia". Yeah I like its pepuliar noisiness and smell from the street....

Unfortunately about the food, I already had stomachache by the second day there I couldn't eat as much as I wanted to, but still I enjoyed food there. Chinese food is the best in the world! The food in the pic is 豆腐花。 I only had that with sweet sauce before but this time it was in savory soup. mmm....yummy! Other things I ate? I can't count.....they treated me so good. Chicken feet, spare ribs, dim sum, fish mouth..... That's true Chinese eat everything but bones. It's endlees if I start talking about food but if you have a chance to go to Shanghai I recommend you to eat seafood like shrimps. They are quite tasty.

うーん、ほんとはもっと書きたいけどまずはここまで。でも腹痛のせいでstreet foodがトライできなかったのがかなり悔やまれる。お饅頭一個３０セントくらいだから無理にでも食うべきだったか。中国と言えばグルメ旅行なのにぃ。レストランとなるとほとんど中華ばかりだけど、でもモールのfood courtとかに行けば入っているお店は（特にデザート系）海外からのものも多いし食生活はほんと豊か。でも菜食主義者はどうしてるんだろう。
まあ食べ物についてはコレくらいにして次は観光系の話でいきましょうか。

Challenge the triple!

行ってきました 、南大沢のアウトレットモール。前々からなかなか悪くないとの評判を聞きつつ、なかなか行く機会がなかったけど今回はわざわざ友達が有給を使ってお休み取ってくれて一日そこで時間を使ってきました。

思ったより南大沢遠くなかった。何しろ電車が私のお気に入りの京王線。京王線は一番居眠りしやすい電車だなあ、と感じます（各駅ね）。車内もまあまあ綺麗だし、台風、雪にも強く運転見合わせがほとんどない（学生時代はそれが残念だったけれど）。それに私鉄にしては珍しく何年か前に運賃を値下げしたというのがよい。

とにかく思ったより早く南大沢につき、まずはショッピングめぐり。決して他のモールと比べて数が多いというわけではなく、そこまで買い物が得意でない私には丁度良い大きさ。半日で大体廻れます。ちゃんとアウトドア系、フォーマル、カジュアル系全て揃ってて結構好きだったな。ただいわゆるブランド物はCoachくらいなのでブランド物好きの人には物足りないでしょう。レディースデイに合わせて平日に行って園内はすき気味だったのにさすがCoachの品物は回転が早かった。恐るべきブランド力。

また駅に隣接してこれまた私のお気に入りのTOHO cinemasがあるので（手っ取り早く北米の匂いを味わいたいならここ）Da Vinci's Code見てきました。大作をうまくはしょっていて悪くないんじゃないでしょうか？色んなとこ手を入れて話の筋を変えていた感じはあるけど別に不満に思うほどではない。どうせならシドニーシェルダン風の台詞、「私のことはミスターではなくロバートと呼べ」という台詞を映画の中にも取り込んで欲しかったけど・・・・まあ今回のTom Hunksはシリアスですので。でも今回の映画より上映前に流れたNicolas Cageの出てる911の映画の予告、見ただけで泣きそうになりました。どうも年のせいなのか涙もろくなってきたか・・・・

映画の後は憧れの31のトリプル！オーダーはいっつも頼むチョコミントを今回は断念して初めてのものを。上からJamoca Almond Fudge, Lollipop candy and Kickoff crunch. 下の二つなど見かけがpop過ぎて駄目かも、と思ったけど味は案外いけました。
せっかくのトリプル、やっぱりコーンでと張り切りまくり、それが仇となり結局お決まりの「胸の上に塊アイス落とし（しかも逆さま）」。ばっちり胸の上でアイスが立ちました。31のアイスはHaagen Datsのアイスより溶けるのが早いと思います。黄色いワンピースが黄緑になってました。 また映画の安い水曜日にいつか行きたいな。女性の方はレストランとかも水曜は割引多くお薦めです。やっぱり色んな意味で女性はお得ですね。

Omotesando hills

Yeah finally I had a chance to go to the latest hot spot in Tokyo, Omotesando Hills. It's a shopping plaza located on the main street from Aoyama to Harajuku and designed by Tadao Ando, internationally renowned architect. His trend is the architecture whose concrete surface is totally exposed. I like Japanese traditional wooden architect but that one is hard to be barrier-free, easy to catch a fire and high maintenance required.
So in that sense, concrete-exposed buildings are very popular cause they are tough, look modern going with both in city and countryside and last long.

Omotesando Hills is no exception. It is appealing its existence in a decent way matching with its neighborhood( acutually gray and green is good color combination. The concrete's gray color goes with the zelcova tree's green lining the main avenue). Hope this building will be an architect remains for centuries.

Okay, 花より団子。Time to talk about food. In the most of the restaurants in Omotesando Hills, they set up the price range lower than that of Roppongi Hills and it gave me really good impression but that rule didn't seem to apply all the store there . My friend and I had really nice lunch and felt like dessert time. Found pretty ice cream cafe and that cafe was not crowded as others so we tried to enter....but...$15 for one scoop of an ice cream? what? How could it be that expensive? Is it an ice cream made of gold ingredient? There is also $25 sorbet made of Dom perignon. Mmmmm~~I wanna try those sometime! I know any sweet tastes good when they use good liquer so I bet this ice cream tastes damn good cause they are made by good cook with nice liquer!

Anyway since we couldn't afford those high status sweets this time we compromised with pretty Japanese sweets from Toraya in the picture. They were tasty enough.

ちょっと疲れて表参道ヒルズ開拓し足りなかったかな。次は時間もお金も余裕を持って有閑マダムもどきで突撃するぞ～。まずは館内マップ持たずに歩けるようにならないとね。