Japanese Cantaloupe

Whether it is Fortnum and Mason (UK), Marshall Fields (Chicago) or Seibu (Tokyo), my favorite thing about old school department stores are the food cellars. I was recently thinking about how the metrics for perfection evolve over time. When you are working at the absolute zenith, the most subtle variations are amplified to separate the perfect from the merely great. The gift cantaloupe standards of the Tokyo department stores have evolved to define quintessentially perfect cantaloupe as a melon with vine tendrils reaching 6 inches from the stem.

A little Googling found Brad Templeton's site, but if anybody else has photos of extreme Japanese gift fruit, please email us! Brad mentions $125 melons, but I know I saw showpiece $600 cantaloupes when I was in Tokyo.

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Obento Boxes

I don't know anything about these particular obento box lunches, except that they look more beautiful than delicious.

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Link to a very sweet obento explanation

1975 Cross-Stitch Book

The patterns in this 1975 cross-stitch design book called, simply enough, "Cross Stitch Designs" from Ondori Publishing (Japan) almost make me want to take up cross-stitching. The colors are incredible and the designs include a flute-playing princess riding a unicorn, dancing blue monkeys, urban architecture and no, I'm not making this up. It's a gem that's worth tracking down.

Japanese Hand Tool Magazine

Mister Jalopy, with ratchet, delighted to find people
willing to listen to my formal exposition on hand tools.

The only thing I love more than Japanese magazines obsessively devoted to an extremely narrow field of exalted objects is BEING in an obsessive Japanese magazine. In this case, Factory Gear Magazine, which is billed as "The Latest Entertainment Magazine of Tools."

For 6 hours, the editors photographed and drooled over hand tools that I forgot I even had. By the end of it, even I was damned impressed with my collection of tools.

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Protective Power of a Thousand Stitches

Embroidered senninbari garments ("Thousand Person Stitches") were simple caps, belts or vests that Japanese women would give to soldiers to wear before they went into battle. I love the public-stitching-jam aspect of making one: "a woman from the family or community would stand in a busy location like the entrance to a train station and entreat passersby to add one stitch each. When one thousand stitches had been collected, the belt was believed by some to have special power to protect the bearer from the hazards of battle." Beautiful.
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