A Summer Evening's trip to Apple Store, Ginza

This evening I've put on a nice summer dress, and I'm about to take myself on an outing. 

To dinner? 

Mmm... no.  These days I prefer my own cooking.

A date? 

Mmm... no. These days I prefer reminiscing on the lovely dates of days gone by. 

To the Apple Store, where you get to create your future. Really.

Apple Store Ginza photo by Jouston Huang

Since I've decided as an experiment, to blog every day for a month, you get to come with me.

Lets go. 

Passing the vacant lot behind the Ota house, the cicadas are starting up a party. 

Hey, thats our neighbour, enjoying festivities from his rooftop. 

I knew it. 

The whole rest of the world is eccentric too, just hiding it rather well. 

This is a top-of-the-range weed patch. 

Count how many different shapes there are. 

They are rude with health, and surrounded by many interesting weed-friends, and that makes them all   beautiful.  

They are peaceful weeds, nothing trying to overtake everything else. 

They live on prime Tokyo real estate, many millions of dollars worth, in fact.

Every now and then the owners (who are crazy) say "Lets mow this down'. 

But the barrenness doesn't last long. 

Its a short stroll and we are on the platform of the Toritsu Daigaku Station. 

Its only ever a couple of minutes wait for any train, ever. 

I get chatting to four friends, on their way to their various nights' out. 

Two are in Yukata, the cotton summer kimono's, looking damn fine. 

When I ask "What's for dinner?"I find one couple will be eating Italian, the other couple 'Yattai'. 

A Yattai is a kind of culinary wheelbarrow with a roof, where a friendly old codger serves traditional snacks and sake. You get to sit on a crate, or plank, but it looks like you have lots of fun, and they don't close till sunrise. 

Can you guess the 'Yattai' couple?

More Graceful ladies in Yukata. Look closely, and admire her wicker & cloth handbag. 

Fully compostable. 

The good thing about weekend evenings, the crowds don't crush your bows. 

 And you get to see daddies enjoy their children, before another five days of coming home at midnight.

Graceful! 

Arrived.
The world's most elegant and expensive buildings have the Apple Store surrounded.
The holds its own so well.

We all labor on our dreams alongside ladies in Yukata, making me feel somehow elevated.

After my iBook lesson, I've now got a clear road ahead for how to create this Visual Language book we are working on.  

Over the road to the Matsuya department store. 

Goldfish jelly, a traditional sweet evoking summer evenings by the cool of a pond.
Don't worry, no goldfish were harmed. 

My mission - to buy cream and oatmeal.  My local supermarket has neither,  and I don't know how long I will survive without them. 

A little longer, it seems, as this store is also very Japanese. 

Peachy dessert wrapping. How refined. 

Morning Glory flowers, one of the many symbols of summer

Something cute about the Japanese is the way they ask every foreign visitor "Does your country have  four seasons?"  

They really are convinced that four seasons, like tatami mats and politeness, are unique to their own country. 

In a way, they are.  

Just as we bring out Christmas paraphernalia for a few weeks of the year, the Japanese intensify the Summeriness of Summer, or wintriness of winter, by changing EVERYTHING to match. 

Not just the sweets in the department stores, but the tea bowls at home, the slippers at the enhance hall, even the words in a haiku are brought out to match the season, then put away carefully when it is done.

And that, that is how you savour life as it goes by.