Beloved Japan, I will be back soon. But right now, I am enjoying the sweet landscape of my native France. This is Saint Germain, on the West side of Paris.

フランスに帰りました。すぐに日本に戻りたいですが、ただいまパリの地方をエンジョイしています。ここはサンジェルマンという町です。

Thanks Lady Gabrielle for inviting me to "your" castle...

This is the title of a very successful Japanese movie, inspired by a manga created by Oguri Saori and based on her own love story with Tony, an American "gaikokujin" - their communication, their misunderstandings, their cultural differences, but above all, of course... their love and their will to build a beautiful relationship together. In Japan, I was the embarrassing gaikokujin but as I came back to France two days ago, I can also say that my darling is a foreigner.

A piece of conversation between two foreign darlings (translated from Japanese)

H (coming back from a picnic with the students and teachers of the school he's used to do tutorate lessons as a part-time job) :
- Today, during the picnic, we and the other teachers noticed something amazing. All the best pupils, the ones who always behave nicely and have good marks, were eating a hand-made bento (lunchbox). And the ones who are undisciplined and uneasy to control in class and so on, they had a supermarket bento.
Me :
- Oh, really ?
H :
- Yes. So the kids who received a nice hand-made lunchbox from their mother clearly want to give something back to her. So they are good kids in return.
Me :
- *?????*

The gaikokujin's point of view

Oh boy.
That sounds so sweet, so naive, so unaware of 100 years of sociology - and more -, so kawaii, so far from the reality to me.
In the French point of view, the interpretation of such a (sad) observation is : there are some wealthy families where mummies have nothing to do but cooking for their husbands and kids, and where kids have nothing to do but being good kids. In a traditional-family-frame-society like Japan, a hand-made lunchbox means a housewife, a housewife means a rich and hard-working husband, a rich and hard-working husband means a comfortable life for mother and kids, a comfortable life generally means no trouble, at least no trouble at school, no trouble on the social scene. A hand-made bento is an exterior sign of wealth and quietness.
That's my first point.
Then I could say : how can you seriously believe that a kid who doesn't receive an hand-made bento kind of wants to "punish" the mother being a trouble-maker at school ? Come on... kids even don't care about the quality of food, they could eat anything if we let them... As if kids were not loving their parents whatever they are, whatever they do or give to them; as if they did not want to make their parents prouds of them whatever the quality of their lunchbox.
Social criticism, cynism and un-enchanted vision of the human relations : French I am. And my darling had the same look of astonishment when I explained my point of view than I had when I heard his story before.

The keys to understand

- In Japan, there is a mythic image of the mother-kid relationship. They say there is no Freud-trype Oedipus complex in Japan, but in my opinion, this is basically the same. Whatever, the Japanese are often refering to the special link between a kid and his/her mother, and they tend to take it as a model of human relationship in general. As a foreigner, I can not imagine how powerful the symbol of this link is. Especially when it deals with food. You can multiply the mother complex by the food complex, and you make it burst.

- Social criticism is not a "notional sport" in Japan as it is in France. Japanese people are used to look at the relation from human to human first, and at the way they feel toward each other. They are not driven by the socio-scientific universalism of the situations, as we are. If there is universalism, this is the one of feelings and scheme of relations - parents to kids, men to women...

So my darling's comment was extremely logical regarding to his culture : he observed a given situation and made it a generality, not in a cold and social-oriented way, but in a sentimental, almost poetic way.

This is an example of daily surprises you can have when your darling is a foreigner. But as Saori says, the thing is that we are really happy like this...

Tomorrow, I fly back to Paris. But Japan is my destiny, and I will be back soon. It has to be like this.
It's written in the air, in the stars, in my DNA.

Tokyo is saying good bye to me offering some unexpected pieces of street-art.

Wall-art (Laforet)

Arashi gentlemen (Shinbashi)

"Tu m'as saoulé" (Harajuku)

Ninja show (Asakusa)

Roller-coaster telekinesie (Yokohama)

Jingle bells (Yokohama)

Orange vitamins (Omotesando)

Guitar Hero (Yokohama)

I am going to France for the summer; this is the perfect opportunity to have many sayonara dinners with various friends and to eat delicious things...
すぐにフランスに帰りますので最近友達と色々の「さようならパーチ」をして、よく食べてしまいました。

ごちそうさまでした！

This is the first open-cemetery I have seen in my life : no gate, no fence around the grave-yard; the normal street just becomes the Aoyama cemetery street and that's it, you walking into the "garden of souls"... It's green, a bit wilder than the city around you can visit from dawn to sunset. Some people do their jogging around the graves, some other do pic-nics during the summer. It's actually a lively place...
I was looking for the grave of François Bonne, a little priest from my aunt/uncle/cousins' region, la Chartreuse (France) who became bishop of Tokyo around 1911, but I couldn't find it i the Gaijin-bochi. It was one century ago...

Sandals are not sexy. Sandals are not glamour. But sandals are funny. And how can you make sandals even less sexy, less glamour but definitely funnier ? Adding unexpected accessories, of course.

Hotflops for Laforet Harajuku

Golf is obviously popular...


Martini and olives, champagne and bubbles, tennis balls, grape and ananas...
there were some more, but I have been asked not to take pictures anymore...

("J'aime la sensation de la mayonnaise qui me nappe les orteils"
"Dariaaaa ! Ce que tu dis est abominable !")

One year as Alice in Wonderland
Not only Tim Burton's Alice was released this year; but the thematic of Alice in Wonderland has been in the air since I moved to Japan. I have been fighting to understand what people say and think, and I had the feeling that everybody around was crazy. I followed smiling cats on the street, and I couldn't resist to all this unknown food saying "eat me". I ran after time like after a white rabbit. A friend even called me "white rabbit". Japan sincerely looks like Lewis Carroll's Wonderland.

アリス・イン・ワンダーランドのように、今年知らなかった世界に来て、分からない話を聞いて、時々変な国の感じがありました。「私を食べて」というお菓子を始めて食べて、白いウサギのようによく走って、道でニコニコしてる猫二会って、すばらしくて意味がない一年間でした。

Mirror reflection

Tik-tok on the clock

Through the looking-glass, and what I found there

Getting the keys

Welcome to Wonderland

Singing flowers

Drink me

Too big

Too small

The way to go... somewhere

Tea-party

Wonderlandized

Superflat Cheshire Cat

The Queen of Hearts

Final Escape

I will be back in Wonderland soon...

Who said that market studies were boring ? Last week, to learn more about the French-style bakeries in Japan, I went to the far-away Hadano (one hour by train from Shinjuku by Odakyu line, until Tokaidaigaku-mae station) in order to interview Jinbo-san, the owner of the bakery "Le Lourdes". Me and my colleague have been treated like family, and it was great to listen to the Japanese "pan-ya-san", to learn about his story and his bread, to understand how different the market is between France and Japan.
After tasting the best "pain de mie" ever (without sugar, without oil... only an original making process to transform the flour into the nicest bread), we had a walk into the close fields. Jinbo-san works with local bio-cultivators focusing on organic and natural products. We talked a lot about the French consumption, the Japanese one, the trends, the needs... How couldn't we be touched by these talkative guys, who carry the French flag in their truck ? I give you the image of mutual interest.

最近東京の郊外のパン屋に行きました。日本のパン屋について市場分析をしていますので、オナーに色々聞きたかったです。パン屋さんはとても優しくて、興味深い説明をもらいました。パン屋の後で麦畑を見に行きました。ビオの野菜や麦など見られたし、農耕者とよく話したし、面白い写真を取れました。とても楽しくて、色々な勉強できました。

It's not far away from my dear Shinjuku 3chome : here is my new playground, between Iidabashi and Ichigaya. I spend the last days in Japan at a friend's place, two minutes by foot from the very beginning of Kagurazaka-dori. The area is trendy, full of bakeries, French restaurants and cosmopolitan stores. Not bad for a second Japanese home...

Some new riversides...

People... fishing...


Conscience matters

Tokyo is full of confidential resources... At the end of Omotesando, behind Prada, there is a an oasis called Nezu Museum. Not only you can enjoy artworks and exhibitions there, not only you can have a nice bowl of macha but you can also have the most restful, peaceful walk after your frantic Harajuku shopping... Judge by yourself.