200 posts from 2008

A couple of items to add to my Best-of-2008 list, one because I forgot it the first time around, one because I've only just discovered it:

Best Musical Discovery of 2008: David S. Ware.  His music is uncompromisingly avant-garde (also uncompromisingly beautiful), but he seems to have internalized the advice Thelonious Monk gave to a young Steve Lacy: "Don't just go out there and play weird shit."  Ware and his colleagues never forget that the roots of jazz are in the blues, that it must swing.

Best Roadside Food of 2008:  I consider myself a connoiseur of roadside and street food; more often than one might expect it stands at the pinnacle of a country's cuisine.  I'm thinking for example, of satay in Bangkok or tacos in any Mexican city.  Here on the island of Oahu one wants to head to Kahuku where one will be delighted to find Fumi's Kahuku Shrimp.  One of the reasons that street food is so good is that they don't try to do everything.  They do the one thing they do, with, perhaps a few variations on it, and nothing else.  That focus ensures that they do that one thing right.  This is certainly the case with Fumi's where one finds on the menu: shrimp.  We tried the coconut shrimp and the ginger shrimp.  Both were tremendous, and leave us, on our last day on Oahu, contemplating a drive back to the North Shore.

—David

Fuji's own climate:
Summit cloud-shrouded
On a blue-sky cloudless day

--Julian

Mark, making a rare visit to Blockhead headquarters, offers his best of 2008:

Best music of 2008: On that list, I would put Bon Iver's "For Emma, Forever Ago..." as the best, and I also liked Sam Phillips's "Don't Do Anything." 

Best Christmas Songs Discovered (a tie):  Fat Daddy by Muddy Waters and the one by Steve Colbert.  Also I downloaded a version of Frosty the Snowman being played on a hand saw.

Best books:  Out Stealing Horses (English translation 2005) by Per Petterson and The Gathering by Anne Enright.

Best movie:  "No Country for Old Men" and... it's not from last year but the other night on cable I watched "Buffalo 66." What a gem. I was especially pleased with myself for not ever choosing to live in Buffalo, New York.

Best new drink tried:  Amaretto and ginger ale. This brought back pungent tingly memories from just after high school when one day in my 1978 Honda Civic...

Best pizza (delivered):  Pizza La half-and-half, hand tossed crust, Italian basil and spicy sausage.

Best Sento:  8-cho mei, Ginza, Tokyo

Best Super Sento: Yukai Sokai, Chigasaki / Runner up:  Inariyu, Hachiioji

Best podcast:  It's All Politics, NPR

—Mark (Blockhead Emeritus)

Looking back and savoring some of the high points is a great way to end the year.

Best ryokan: Horai in Atami
When you splurge on a top-class, top-priced ryokan (¥50,000; $570; E400; £370 per person per night), a large suite and impeccable service are a given. But Horai reaches beyond the expected with its arresting view over Sagami Bay, wonderful hillside baths, and a menu that features fresh local sashimi and seasonal food prepared with a simplicity that speaks of genius.

Best trip: Wakayama in May
From the seaside hot springs of Shirahama to the central mountain fastness honeycombed with pilgrims' trails leading to Nachi, Japan's highest falls, this is a rewarding area to explore. Highlights were the private cabin "Tsubo-yu" hot spring bath built over a rushing stream in Yumomine, and the remote, breathtakingly beautiful Dorokyo gorge.

Best breakfast: bills
In high summer, rise early, head for the coast between Kamakura and Enoshima, take a good book to read while you wait in line for the doors to open, and you'll be rewarded with bills' delicious scrambled eggs and pancakes, to be enjoyed at leisure looking out on a sunbleached seascape panorama. After breakfast, cross the road to the sandy beach and complete your Shonan celebration with a swim.

Best izakaya: Inaka (Chigasaki)
For its sashimi--the freshest in this port city--and complete lack of pretension. Santa hats would never find their way onto the heads of the staff. Inaka's spec is providing food and beverages to enjoy and a place to unwind after work; they are closed on Sundays. [Inaka was also chosen by David as Best Restaurant of 2008.]

Best exhibitions: Inoue; Hammershoi
Inoue Tadahiko: The Last Manga Exhibition. (May to July; Ueno Royal Museum). A powerful and moving walk through the life and death of swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. The stark black-and-white calligraphy and drawing is intensely masculine, but it's the feminine that finally leaves the viewer undone.
Vilhelm Hammershoi (September to December; The National Museum of Western Art, Ueno ). His apartment, imagined bare with its white wooden doors. Ida, his wife, in a black dress, sitting against a bare wall, stirring her tea, gazing away vacantly. Hammershoi's piercing observations are visual haiku.

Best music: Verve Remixed Christmas, Tracks 1 & 11
It took a year, but along came two songs that haven't left my turntable: Count Basie's Good Morning Blues remixed by The Real Tuesday Weld [TRTW provided NC Tate's Pop Record of the Year.], and Nina Simone's Chilly Winds Don't Blow remixed by Fink. These two tracks bookend the new Verve Remixed Christmas album, and each is a monument to the art of remix: fidelity to the original, yet a scintillating original creation.

Most expensive and entertaining purchase: Tora-san complete
The complete set of 48 Otoko wa Tsuraiyo (Tora-san) movies with English subtitles set me back ¥150,000 ($1,700; E1,200; £1,100). Tora-san is an inspired comic creation: a Chaplinesque pure-hearted, incurably romantic, generous, venal, black sheep of a hard-working downtown Tokyo family, forever propelled to wander the most scenic areas of Japan. And now I can understand and accompany him on every one of his hilarious misadventures. In order. Whenever I like. 5 down, 43 to go. 

Best adventure of a lifetime: Climbing Mount Fuji in August

Greatest act of kindness: Coming down the ash trail of Fuji, my shoes finally made it impossible to walk. M, as exhausted as I was, ran down to the car and brought back my sandals. No thanks can suffice for that selfless generosity.

--Julian

For the last week, the local farmers and householders have been hoeing, clipping, and generally tidying up. As the year draws to a close, the tempo increases. And the countryside is wreathed in fragrant woodsmoke.

Furious pruning!
Glorious bonfires!
Seven more days to New Year

--Julian

Here's some of what David enjoyed in 2008:

Best Movie of 2008: To say that Hirokazu Koreeda's Aruite mo Aruite mo is the best Japanese film of the year, or even the best film of the year, is to say too little.  This is, in fact, one of the best films I have ever seen.  It is one of the few movies that can sit on the same shelf as Ozu's Tokyo Monogatari.  It  belongs with Ozu's masterpiece not only on account of its quality, but also because, in its plotlessness and its humanity it will sneak up on viewers to provide a tremendously moving, a tremendously satisfying, experience.  I am told that Koreeda was unable to find a distributor for his finest film in the country that elected George W. Bush twice, a country that, unsurprisingly, prefers its movies to feature not human beings, but explosions, superheroes, and submarines.  A version subtitled in English, however, does exist.  I stumbled across it on a transpacific flight.

Best Novel of 2008: As I wrote elsewhere, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is so much a part of the American DNA that I was under the impression that I had read it.  I hadn't, and am now tremendously glad that an odd series of circumstances lead me to pick it up.  There is only one other novel, Huckleberry Finn, which tells us so much about the America of its time, and of ours.  Owing to the unfortunate final chapters Twain tacked on, it is difficult to call Twain's classic perfect.  One has no hesitation in employing that adjective to describe Hawthorne's Letter.

Best Restaurant of 2008: It's actually been the best restaurant of just about every year since I discovered it, but Inaka, my local izakaya, continues, every time I am there, to delight me with Japanese food at its simple and earthy best.

Best Meal of 2008: The thing about blogging is that you tend to record the things that delight you soon after encountering them, and I've written about this meal before, too.  A few months after digesting it, it remains the culinary highlight of the year.  A simple steak frites served up at the Station House Cafe in Point Reyes Station, it was exquisite.  The New York steak was from Niman Ranch, which, I am now certain, is producing the best beef in America, and it was perfectly prepared, seasoned only, I believe, with a little salt and pepper.  I enjoyed my meat with the best beer I had this year.

Best Beer of the Year: That would be the Lagunitas Brewery's IPA.  Perfectly sharp and hoppy, and perfect with a good steak (and every other meal I had in Northern California this summer).  It did have some competition, both from a non-commercial, but soon to go commercial, brewer I know here in Japan, and also the always satisfying beers made by Baird Beer, available both at the original location in Numazu, and now at  The Taproom in Nakameguro, Tokyo.

Fitness Fad of the Year:  Who would have thought that I would come to love good old fashioned push ups?  They are now a regular part of my routine, thanks to something that, like so many other good things, I stumbled across on the Internet.

Technological Innovation of the Year:  It didn't actually appear in 2008, but that's the year a Suica card found its way into my wallet.  Always a techno-skeptic, always a late adopter—at one point in my life I was confident I would never use email—I typically go nuts over these things once I finally get started, and now I can't imagine traveling around the Kanto area without my little green card to smooth my way.

More anon, perhaps.

—David

NC Tate writes about some of what he enjoyed in 2008:

Digital Person of the Year: Jonathan Meades, the erudite and wry documentary filmmaker. YouTube is an essential starting point. Then invest in the BBC box set of nine of his works. Little has been funnier this year; nothing as intelligent.

Meal of the Year: Tonkatsu (hire, naturally) at Isetan in Kichijoji. My madeleine.

Summer Holiday of the Year: Four days at home with the blinds closed with the five volumes of The Wire, finishing at nearly three in the morning. For once there is truth out there, and The Wire is one of the greatest TV programmes, reinforcing the notion that the novel is no longer best equipped to handle narrative. Which leads me on to

Find of the Year: David Markson. Another David directed me to the wonder of Markson's later novels, works seemingly little more than a collection of anecdotes and musings but in effect more powerful and sad and comforting than, on the page, A meeting B leading to C.

Knowledge of the Year: That portrait photography was one of the reserved occupations in England during World War Two.

Phrase of the Year: Dead-cat bounce. Those working in the financial sector may have something to give (not take) after all.

Pop Record of the Year (and the only one I bought): The London Book of the Dead by The Real Tuesday Weld. Referencing music from the 30s and Eastern Europe, Stephen Coates offers up a sardonic collection of toe-tappers. As the sleeve notes: "Born. Loved. Dreamt.

Novel of the Year: The Gilt Kid by James Curtis. Curtis's 1936 novel about lowlifes in London is at least a most affecting account of the male in his early 20s, unsure what is next and vain enough not always to care. Vivid as few books are, being so by dispensing with adjectives and adverbs and letting nouns and verbs do the work.

—NC Tate

In the first of two posts, Julian lists some of the things that knocked his socks off in 2008:

The nine best movies I saw in 2008:

Blindness (2008) We take social order for granted. Blindness shows what we face when it breaks down. It is also a superb adaptation of the original book.
Wit (2001) We take our health and life for granted. Emma Thompson plays a woman forced to deal with a cancer diagnosis and her own mortality.
Into the Wild (2007) With Thoreau and others as his guide, a young man refuses to take his given life for granted, and searches for something purer.

Atonement (2007) An involving, atmospheric tale of a childish mistake and its repercussions. Another spot-on literary adaptation.
Michael Clayton (2007) A self-consciously fragmented construction can't ruin this powerful and satisfying contemporary drama of conscience vs. big business

Iron Man (2008) Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges entertain the pants off us in this silly superhero fantasy.
Kung Fu Panda (2008) With no movie in-jokes or toilet humor, we're left with a fun comedy romp deliciously voiced by Jack Black, Angelina Jolie and Dustin Hoffman. The animation is beautiful, and there are even moments of philosophical profundity.
Tropic Thunder (2008) There's enough sex and toilet humor for two movies in this joyously over-the-top Hollywood parody. Plenty of laughs.

August Rush (2007.) The attempt to spin a Dickensian yarn of a wayward orphan in present-day New York is an audacious failure. But above all, and most successfully, this is a paean to the joy and power of music.

Three atmospheric novels I read this year:

Forgetfulness (2006) by Ward Just
Charlotte Gray (1998) by Sebastian Faulks
Out Stealing Horses (English translation 2005) by Per Petterson

Love, solitude, revenge, survival, death... All three books share a vivid sense of place and character, compelling narrative and beautiful writing. It was a profound pleasure to inhabit these three worlds this year.

—Julian

It began raining late on Saturday night and didn't stop until Sunday afternoon. The sky cleared and the temperature dropped during the night. This morning we woke to a spectacular hoarfrost. The empty radish fields above the valley were ghostly white as snow in the first orange of the dawn. The moon, two days past full, shone down. And the sky lightened to show the Tanzawa mountains frosted with snow.

--Julian