We went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Ebisu to see the OTAKU persona=space=city (in Japanese) exhibition. Everything looks very dodgy, full on Akiba culture! C went to a lecture by Kaichiro Morikawa (in Japanese) who is the commissioner of this exhibition, and I enjoyed this exhibition because of C's commentary. There weren't any explanation for each work, and many people were saying 'wow... ah, what are these?'. I was almost going to explain to them! The other interesting thing about this exhibition is that it was originally shown at the Biennale Venezia 2004 International Architecture Exhibition. And it finally came back to Japan. This OTAKU exhibition will be on TV tonight. It will be on NHK kyouiku (educational TV), Shin Nichiyou Bijutsukan (in Japanese), starts at 8pm, I'm going to watch it.

I hardly ever go to Kanda, but I was there yesterday, so I decided to go to the famous soba (buckwheat noodle) shop called Kanda Matsuya (in Japanese). Just after I ordered Goma-Soba which comes with a goma (sesame) flavoured dipping sauce, Curry-nanban (noodles in curry soup) was served to the old man next to me. His hot noodles looked very good! Actually I should have ordered normal soba, and tried their traditional Tokyo style strong dipping sauce (salty and darker in color than in Western Japan). There were lots of old men over 60 years old, sharing the bottles of beer and eating nibbles (not eating noodles!). I don't know if they were classmates or they became friends because of this shop, but they seemed good mates. When someone entered the shop, they said 'Hello! Take a seat here!' and started conversations like 'do you know Hama-chan's home address?'. This shop was established in 1884. In 2001, the old two storey wooden building was selected as a historical building in Tokyo (in Japanese). By the way, there are two doors, the entrance is on the right side and the exit is on the left!

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These days, I've been looking for nice folding chairs and a low table which I can also use as a bench, and I can't find any! But there are lots of nice and reasonable items in a Habitat catalogue! It made me sigh!! But if I were in London, I probably don't care Habitat this much, and I might be complaining about MUJI in London because of their limited selection (MUJI in Japan has good appliances and food). Is it just 'The grass is always greener on the other side'?!

C went snowboarding in Niigata last weekend, and he brought Koshihikari manju for me. Koshihikari is the name of rice. They are baked buns, using wheat flour and Koshihikari brand rice flour, with bean paste filling. The wrapping paper is meant to look like a straw rice bag, it looks very cute and tastes alright. He also brought a bottle of Sake. Although he asked black cat (very good courier company called Yamato) to carry all his snowboarding equipment, I was wondering why he brought such a heavy gift for me. And I realised that I said 'Niigata is famous for rice, so they have lots of good sake brands too'. He remembered that! Great! He perfectly understands the omiyage culture!

My sister, who lives in Chiba visited me last weekend. She brought bread from Zopf (in Japanese) in Chiba. Zopf is one of the best bakeries in the Kanto area, and I always wanted to try. Thanks!

Yesterday, I wrote that I re-used a Tetra Pak for making chocolate pate, and I checked the site of Tetra Pak Japan. I was very surprised to see their character called 'Tetra Pak kun'. He looks very similar to the milk carton in Blur's Coffee & TV video. Tetra Pak Japan even made a TV commercial with him. He is walking around just like the milk carton in Blur's video!

I borrowed the book Chocolate + Sweets x Wrappings (in Japanese) by Ricca Fukuda from the library. My friend showed me this book last year, and I remembered that there was a nice recipe for chocolate pate. I thought it would be a good Valentine chocolate. But the picture page of the recipe was ripped! I couldn't believe it!! Anyway, I still could read the recipe: just add marshmallows, oreos (without cream), salted roasted almonds and dried cranberries to melted chocolate, and let the mixture set in a mould. It was very easy to cook and it looks very artistic!

Yesterday, we went to a sushi restaurant with our friend M. She ordered Toro-taku which I'd never heard of. It was Toro (fatty tuna) and Takuan (pickled daikon radish), and I found that it was nice to have two different textures in my mouth. We got a fresh wasabi root for free, and it came with a sharkskin grater by Chojiro which I've always been wondering if I should buy or not. They use the huge one, but I think the smaller one looks better.

Our good friends moved to our neighbourhood on the weekend. I'm very happy about that! Just an hour before we were going to dinner with our new neighbours, I realized that we haven't eaten anything and we were starving. I asked C to cook Red Wine Risotto. It was very good (not because of I was super hungry). Cooking risotto with Japanese rice is quite difficult, because rice becomes sticky very easily. But this risotto was perfect al dente! I heard that Carnaroli rice is good for risotto. I need to get some for the next time. But I prefer to buy Carnaroli from Carluccio's, especially if they are the same price!

One of the greatest Finnish designer Kaj Franck relaunched Kilta under the name of Teema in 1981 (Kilta is launched in 1952). Teema is very simple and it might look bit boring but its simplicity is great. There were teacups, coffee cups and mugs, and I chose the mugs because we drink lots of coffee. I love them although it would be nice if they were a little bigger. The mug has an old Arabia logo (instead of iittala logo) on the back. I have to be careful not to break them by accident!

Phew! I've just watched a football game Japan vs. North Korea. It was an exhausting game to watch. I usually don't care about football, but the world cup is different! By the way, I really hate a commentary on Japanese sports TV (except NHK, like BBC). Why they always shout at the top of their voice? It's very annoying, and it seems like they are doing it on purpose. I don't want to hear them shouting, I want to shout!

118 years ago today, 8 february 1887, the logo of Japanese post office "〒" was announced. I think it is a very simple good design. We can display it with Unicode, and also typing "ゆうびん (means post in Japanese)" can be converting to "〒" in Japanese system. I also love "〠" the icon of postcode (his name is Number-kun). I drew 〠 next to my postcode when I used to write letters by hands. I miss him. He was very cute! In 1998, the new charactors called poston and others appeared. They don't look good at all.

We were invited to a dinner party on the weekend, and we had lots of great food. I've never tried deep fried olives before, and they were very tasty. I also tasted an anise flavoured liqueur called Goldwasser. It has 22k gold flakes floating in it. Gorgeous! But it was too sweet to drink straight for me...

I baked German red wine cake (Rotweinkuchen). It tastes a bit like Glühwein (hot wine), so I guess this is a winter cake. I doubled the amount of the recipe (in Japanese) to fill up my huge mould from Nordic Ware. So the cake looks better than last year, especially from the side. It's higher! But I'm not sure about the taste. I think my oven is not big enough to bake this amount of cake. I'm going to take this huge cake to my friends without tasting. How brave!

Today is setsubun. That must be why there were four beans in the lift at our building, it made me laugh. Spring starts tomorrow, according to the Japanese lunar calendar, but outside is still very wintery. When the sun is shining, our flat is warm enough without heating. I've been hearing that, because of the hot summer last year, we will have lots of pollen from Japanese cedar and cypress trees this spring . Depressing!!

My favourite ceramic containers by MUJI will be discontinued items very soon. They have a wide selection of sizes including a spaghetti size, and I'm using only the smallest one which is ø6.4cm x H7.3cm. I also have additional easy re-sealing lids and use them as salt boxes. I'm using three varieties of salts in my kitchen. It is not meant to be, but I also use this container as a tea cup. it looks nicer than other cup. Last week, it was on sale for ¥170 (87p) and the original price was ¥315 (£1.61). I bought a few more of them.