standard burger

I am starting to get obsessed with hamburgers...
oh well.
this restaurant is attached to a fashion brand store called "standard" something.
the shop is situated near to the new south extension of shinjuku station on the takashimaya side and features bloody expensive burger sets, that you have to order self service style (which i think is the "attraction" making it special, and more expensive for that matter...) but taking all this aside the taste is outstanding. i haven't eaten such good burgers in japan, yet. the meat was actually grilled and the burgers have random toppings like avocado, which always wins me over immediately. this set was about 1300yen (roughly 10euros).
delicious.

athlete's foot

Ok, imagine you want to open a shoe-shop. you want to deliver this sporty feeling, like athletic or so. but putting "shoe" in the name is kind of out and overused. well, why not name it "athlete's foot", right?
good place to buy shoes...

midtown madness

You have seen them collapse in kobe after the big earthquake. but that didn't mean the end of the concept. recently i came across this construction site where elevated highways will intersect. truly amazing. wouldn't you agree?

ANA Love

Gosh, just look at this poster advert and repeat the slogan 15 times in fast succession. or is it really just my own perverted mind??

plus the girl is putting on some gloves and the japanese writing says: because i like, because it is winter, i want to go on this journey.

seriously, the second biggest airline of japan should be in a position to have someone capable of english check their commercials, before posting them all over the ... you guessed it ... underground stations.

chewing pudding

by popular demand...
another sweet review. this time "putcho putcho custard pudding". the japanese don't eat a lot of haribo. which is terrible taking the fact that i adore gummy bears. but once in a while something surfaces, like "putcho putcho", newly introduced a few months ago. this sweet makes me smile some. it is a soft gum filled with gummy pieces. the original taste range went from grape to orange, which won me over already. recently they went a step ahead introducing new flavors, like "apple pie" or the one in the picture "custard cream pudding". i guess the most irritating part is the fact, that it really tastes like the japanese style pudding... me who thought eating some milky pudding would help my magnesium deficits rather than adding some pounds of fat. the difference is the surface of the soft gum which obviously is like rubber, and doesn't dissolve as easy as the original. they even put some half caramelized sugar inside the sweet (instead of the usual putcho putcho gummy pieces) because here in japan you have caramel on top of the pudding).
good stuff.

downfall

Looking at this advert for the upcoming superdeluxe dvd edition of german movie "downfall" (der untergang) i had to smile some. in germany there was a big deal of discussion about this movie`s focus on hitler as a person and how such a portrayal would make him appear more human and less evil, something like that. so to take some arguments off the critics it was purposefully named the way it was. we all know that a critical review of the recent history is not a topic in public discourses here in japan. so as commercialism counts, the japanese name of the movie is simply "hitler". of course.

next generation

These are the days for consumer without hesitations like myself, when it pays to be in japan.
so i thought, why not write about the new playstation i tried out this weekend before it comes to europe... 3 months later. lol. lo/.

how was it? endless queues? no problem at all, no queue, nothing. i didn't even planned it, just stumbled into a shop and there it was. limited ingame time to play however. so some kids behind me had to wait 5 minutes longer ;)
but seriously, it somehow flawed my expectations after such a fuzz beforehands. in the way that the new games that were preinstalled just seemed to be not at all new. i mean there was the standard driving game for example: with beautiful landscapes - no doubt- but once you figure that you will have the crystal clear graphics only if you buy one of the new hd televisions as well it doesn't seem so stunning anymore. than there was the typical survival shooter franchise sequel: beautiful surroundings, again, neat animations and every time you kill a bad monster gore splashes out of it like i have never seen before. but why cant i walk freely wherever i want to go to and instead have to follow the prefixed, pre-rendered path of the game designer? i hope they will fix that until the time where prices have dropped and consoles will be actually available to purchase...
thats me in the picture, btw :]
note to self: go to the hairdresser.

R Burger

Ahhh, what bliss,
i just found another uniquely japanese hamburger restaurant. it currently has two branches in roppongi and aoyama (cool citys for foreigners..). they serve hamburgers that have yeast dumplings (Hefekloesse for german friends) instead of the usual bread roll. mine was a wasabi thuna burger (meshed thunfish). tasty, not tooo tasty though ;)
the chain is very determined to make an impression, as you can see everything in the shop has the "r" of "r burger" in it, even the chairs.
now, yeast dumplings as you may wonder, or "man" as japanese call it are a common sight in tokyo. you can by an assortment of them at every convenience store. the standard one would be filled with the typical sweet bean paste (dont ask..), more fancy ones are called pizza-man and are filled with salty stuff, that remotely tastes like pizza. no big dealfor around 1 euro.

chiba manabu

Here in Japan the elite of independent architects regularly display their recent achievements in design to those interested (mainly wannabe elite of independent architecture). this is called "open house". you get to see the architecture just after completion, some time before it is given to the client. so happened recently for chiba manabu. an architect i am very interested in, i even tried to apply once at his office, but was rejected because he hadn't any projects at that time (at least that was what his letter said ;).
the building is a four story appartment house with 3 flats. he takes his turn on the clasic concept of freeing space by hiding everything inside walls. and i mean everything: bathroom, toilet, kitchen applications, storage space and working cells, even the air conditioning (which will mean at least one open door throughout all year...)
walldepth obviously gets problematic here, which he deals with by putting mirrors around the openings. those reflect the exterior and make the window itself appear bigger.
the catch though is a light void and adjoining staircase in the centre of the building. one would think that freeing up a large open room was the idea behind it all. but, ... no. interesting...

architecture matters

People who know me might wonder why i have ignored architectural matters for so long.
here it is. finally i have settled down for this pic i took during my way back from work. i have come to tokyo for its unique challenge of minimal spaces, only to find that sites are merged and apartment towers are blooming out of the earth everywhere. the small scale tokyo, the tiny pieces are hard to find, nowadays.
here is one to be astonished about. just now, i can't remember how such a piece of land is used in europe. i think it might be asphalt extending the street crossing, to make it easier to overlook. not so in tokyo. it's hard to imagine how even a desk would fit into this tiny space.