image: J.L. Olivares
“... but anyway please take one of these little cheese cakes ...”
I was looking for canvases, having taken up oil painting. I knew I could buy some at an enormous art store in Shinjuku, but here I was in Shibuya, wandering around, and I saw this store called “Palette” which looked as though it had some painting equipment in the window. So I knocked on the door; maybe they’d have some.
“Excuse me, I’d like to buy some canvases,” I said.
“Canvases? What are canvases?” said a long, lanky young man.
“Ah, I don’t know the Japanese for canvases. That’s the English word. They are used to paint pictures on.” And I pantomimed painting a picture.
“Hmm. Oh, you mean kanbasu. For oil painting.” He pronounced the word a little different than I did, in a Japanese way.
“Well yes. I thought I could buy some from you.”
“Ah, we don’t have any…but please come in. I will make some telephone calls. I know some places in Shibuya which might have canvases.”
I thanked him and went inside the shop, which upon closer inspection revealed itself to be a pastry shop, not an art-supply shop at all. The name of the shop, Palette, was a metaphor.
After five minutes, the young man came to me to apologize. He could discover no place in Shibuya which sells canvases. I would have to go to Seikaido[1] in Shinjuku, 10 minutes away on the Yamanote line, instead.
“I am so very sorry,” the man said, “but anyway please take one of these little cheese cakes …”[2]
referenced works
- Seikaido in Shinjuku is a 6-story shop selling every art implement ever imagined. ↩
- Cheesecake in Japan is generally either "rare" or " baked". By "rare" they mean the fresh, unbaked cottage cheese type. ↩
location information
- Name: a pastry shop in Shibuya
- Address: Aoyama Dai Building, Shibuya 2-9-10, Shibuya-ku
- Time of story: afternoon
- Latitude: 35.660679
- Longitude: 139.707019
- Map: Google Maps
033 “Dewy eyes closed, her porcelain arms and legs splayed attractively”
032 “The ika had made too many turns.”
031 “A tongue was moving around my big toe, like a warm slug crawling. ”
030 “Ichor will gush out of this carefully constructed image”
029 “I wince, more than her.”
028 “Their schoolbags were puddled around their socks, forgotten”
027 “Amongst the bottles and the obscure records and the crimson velvet walls”
026 “Nostalgia isn’t an easy indulgence for amateurs”
025 “... but anyway please take one of these little cheese cakes ...”
024 “The inhabitants of the blue, makeshift tents in the bushes.”
023 “Yeah … I’m sorry too. Merry Christmas.”
022 “I was dead broke. It was winter.”
021 “The district's energy had faded to rest on my last night there.”
020 “The slightly bald salaryman didn't correspond to any memory I could conjure up.”
019 “She laughed at my effort and responded in English, ‘Long time, no seduction.’ ”
018 “In my dreamy state, oblivious to signs and announcements I often boarded the wrong train.”
017 “I was fifteen years old and it was one of those nights.”
016 “That ear of corn just wanted to go home”
015 “With his painstakingly coiffured mane blowing in the wind”
014 “Her voice, even across languages, betraying her worry.”
013 “I saw them drawing bamboo sticks from a silver rectangular box.”
012 “A simulacrum of someone else's home, equal parts comfort and loss.”
011 “Jumbled Escheresque insanity where geography in any traditional sense ceases to exist.”
010 “I could hardly make out anything apart from his glowing eyes...”
009 “Shibuya was like a stroke.”
008 “I cried for a while and wiped the dead bracken off my karate pants.”
007 “Both my tie and my disposition hang limp as I calculate the remaining distance to the station.”
006 “I once read about a Chinese maiden whose feet were unbound by a cruel man …”
005 “The Bad Girl strutted off and I was left with a ham egg pie.”
004 “I arrived expecting an irritated Japanese person to step out of the crowd and identify himself as Hideki.”
003 “The woman at the ticket window seemed surprised to see another human being. I was the only visitor.”
002 “Flanked on either side by adult manga shops and the like, the smell of yakitori in the air.”
001 “For two weeks the day began with this morning walk, our shared routine.”
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