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Noemi Noemi
31 janvier 2012

Hommage

Un de mes plus intenses souvenirs d’enfance remonte à la nuit où ma petite sœur s’est annoncée. Si si, bien que ce soit difficile à croire, cette grande jeune fille aujourd’hui chargée de presse pour une radio internationale a un jour été un petit bout de chou sur le point d’être mis au monde.

J'avais cinq ans et je dormais du sommeil du juste, lorsque que mon père vint me réveiller doucement. Le bébé tant attendu allait bientôt arriver, et « comme prévu » dans ce cas-là, je devais aller passer le reste de ma nuit « chez Léone ».

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Léone, c’était la maman de ma copine Pauline, avec laquelle un lien mystique était noué pour toujours puisque nous étions nées avec exactement une semaine d’écart. Cela me semblait, à l’époque, constituer une sorte de parenté sacrée qui m’a tellement marquée que même aujourd’hui, alors que les dates importantes, remarquables ou symboliques se bousculent dans mon agenda, je ne peux pas m’empêcher d’y songer malgré moi à chaque fois qu'arrive le 10 novembre.

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Depuis le début de ma scolarité, j’avais donc un abonnement « chez Léone », à la table de laquelle j’échappais pour quelques années aux affres de la cantine, et chez qui j’allais également après les cours, faire mes devoirs et jouer avec Pauline jusqu’à ce que ma maman à moi puisse enfin s’échapper de ses interminables réunions parents-professeurs. Ce deuxième foyer était pour moi emprunt des rituels quotidiens, de la révision des tables de multiplication et de l’odeur du goûter ; c’était la maison des jours d’école, de la petite routine bien huilée de l’enfance. Aussi, l’idée de descendre l’avenue Maurice Ravel en pleine nuit pour m’y rendre à une heure si peu normale me faisait l'effet d'une grande aventure. J’avoue que la perspective de l’arrivée de ma petite sœur m’apparaissait comme un évènement mineur par rapport à l’excitation d’aller dormir chez mon amie de façon si inopinée.

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On m’enfila, sacrilège ultime, mon manteau directement sur mon pyjama, et mon père m’emmena dans la fraîche nuit de janvier.

Un coup d’ascenseur plus tard, et je me retrouvais face à Léone qui nous attendait sur le palier, en chemise de nuit, serrée dans un châle, ses épais cheveux bruns cascadant sur ses épaules. Je me rappelle d’avoir été stupéfiée de les voir si longs et si beaux, eux que j’avais toujours vus impeccablement nattés et noués en chignon, onduler dans le courant d’air comme des sarments d’hiver. C’est toujours de cette façon que je me souviendrai de ma nourrice : une apparition magique et bienveillante sur le pas de sa porte ouverte, les bras tendus prêts à m’accueillir, postée là tel le bon génie de la maison.

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Mon souvenir d’enfance s’arrête là ; sommeil ou inattention, je ne rappelle ni m’être couchée, ni avoir pris le petit déjeuner le lendemain matin avec mes hôtes, ni quoique ce soit jusqu’à la visite à la clinique où je rencontrai enfin ma sœur. Mais je garde à tout jamais la sensation exquise de cette nuit incongrue, et la mémoire du sourire calme de Léone, toute auréolée de lumière.

 

Avec tout mon amour

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28 janvier 2012

Spiritual Saturday

Sometimes you feel like you need to find your path to heavens. You need spiritual food. If it happens to you in Tokyo, I suggest you to go to Gokokuji area (Bunkyo-ku, Yurakucho line) and raise your spirits.

First stop : Saint Mary Cathedral, designed by Tange Kenzo. A springboard to the sky !

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Second stop :Gokokuji, one of the very few temples that were not destroyed by the bombings during WW2. Spirits are among us...

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See you in Heaven !

26 janvier 2012

SNOW QUEEN

SNOW

23 janvier 2012

Tokyo Snow White

There is nothing magical like snow. It's like it was purifying the world, leaving it brand new, untouched, ready for everything. It cleans your soul too, making you believe in love again. The silence of snow... lets you hear your own heartbeat.

On the way back home

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22 janvier 2012

Rainy week-end in Tokyo

The winter season is so sunny in Japan that it is always suprising when the rain comes back at the end of January. We even had  snow on Friday. I was going to have a nice walk in Bunkyo-ku, but I could not move from home because of the cold, rainy, awful weather. So : what should you do in Tokyo when it rains and you already visited all the interesting museums ? The answer is easy : onsen and shopping.

Shimizuyu-onsen, 5 min. from Musashi-Koyama station (Tokyu Meguro Line)

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Entry : 450 yen (bring your towel and soap)

 

Made in Japan shoes, Musashi-Koyama Arcade

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1500 yen (in sales)

 

Wish you al a nice grey Sunday !

Publicité
21 janvier 2012

My world

For some reasons I love living in the XXIth Century. For example, you can get this kind of map for free. It shows my world, based on my friend list on Facebook. Japan and Europe (all Europe ! Thanks ETP !) are at the top of Noemi's Friendly Lands shortlist; as well as North America and East Africa, where I have never been...

It's a small world after all

friends map jan 2012Great, isn't it ?

13 janvier 2012

Dans la famille "Gouvernement", je voudrais...

Alors en tant que princesse, n'est-ce pas, je suis habituée à cotoyer les plus grands. Et accessoirement des membres du gouvernement. Bon, normalement je ne devrais pas leur accorder si facilement de prendre des photos à mes côtés, mais bon... Je n'ai jamais su résister à mes admirateurs transis, hu hu hu. C'est beau de faire le bonheur de quelqu'un.

Ce soir, le ministre des Affaires étrangères Alain Juppé était à la Résidence de France, Tokyo, pour faire un petit coucou à ses chers compatriotes et nous dire de ne pas désespérer. C'est la crise, mais on va survivre.

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Eeeeet une incruste de toute beauté, ni vue ni connue... oh la belle prise

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Who's next ???

12 janvier 2012

Tokyo Love Love Love... Love

 

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8 janvier 2012

Pilgrimage to the the most inspiring Japan-lover

This Sunday, as it was part of my New Year good resolutions, I went to say hello to the bust of my great, great idol : I give you Mr. Lafcadio Hearn. If afterlife exists, this guy is in my top-ten list of the people I want an appointment with when I arrive. Of course I need to see a few others before, like my grandma I never had the pleasure to meet for example - family first - but I will definitely give a call to Lafcadio right after.

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... Okay, you have no clue who this gentleman can be. I know. But he should be a legend for all the people who have a sailor's soul and a neverending apetite for new landscapes. Not only he was an amazing writor who wrote dozens of books including analysis of French peotry, linguistic papers and children tales, but also he was an inspiring globe-trotter and his travel notes are so deep I could have drown when I read it.

To summarize the crazy life of this crazy guy, let's say first that he was born in 1850, from an Irish dad and a Greek mum. Apparently Daddy married Mummy secretly and when she had the baby the father and brother got so hungry they fought Daddy to almost-death; finally the couple could escape and take a boat for Ireland. What a beginning. Unfortunately Daddy abandonned wife and child to make his career in India and the Greek mum got so depressed in this over-raining Ireland she left the child to the tyrannic grand-mother. So he grew up basically without parents, and with few love. In order to make his childhood even a bit more romanesque, he got injuried and became half-blind. No, this is not a Dickens novel, it is the truth.

Anyway, even unappy as a kid, he received a top-level education in France (he he) and started studying the French literature closely. But life was hell and he decided to go and see America, so he took a boat hoping that his brother-in-law (the husband of his sister his Dad had with a second wife) could help him to get in a job in Cincinatti. But when he rang the bell, the nice brother just gave him a 5-dollars note and a "good luck". No money, no family, lost in the US... But Lafcadio was amazingly smart and he got employed by Henry Watkin, a quite progressist printor. Quickly, he revealed himself to be more than a simple assistant and launched his own research project, especially about the black ghettos - an amazing guy, I told you. There, he fall in love with a black woman, and married her, but had to leave her and the city because mixed weddings were forbidden at that time. It could have been enough for one life, but no. Then he went to New-Orleans, Louisiana, and started to write about vaudoo, French Opera, Creole culture and cuisine - the first official Creole cooking book ! En français, s'il vous plait ! This man was so open-minded, so multitasking, especially for the XIX century !... - but also the politic responsability for poverty and diseases, crimes, and so on.

Then Lafcadio was sent to the West Indies, and he has been living there for three years. It's fascinating to read his travel notes and personal diaries and letters at that time, because first his new life seems to free his body : sun, spices and naked bodies opened for him a whole world of new sensation that I can imagine after his previous lives in rainy Ireland, grey Paris and gloomy New Orleans. But finally he found himsself lacking for intellectual challenges ; life was too sweet, too easy, and he needed excitement... So he decided to go to... Japan. Tadaaaaam !

I mean, Japan. In 1890.Can you just imagine how was Japan looking like at that time ?

People like us who had always landed in Narita airport, after a oh-my-god-that-was-too-long 12-hours flight, will never know. We will never know what it could represent for someone to go to Japan at that time. And here appears some of my favorite books about Japan : "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" and "Japan : an Attemp at Interpretation", by Lafcadio Hearn. And his travel notes about his "first steps in Asia" are fabulous too. The most crazy is : everything he wrote is still totally true. For example, when he describes his emotion walking on a street covered with "advertisements" painted on the walls, on the roofs, on posters, on fabric; with kanji, kanji, kanji everywhere. And first he could not understand what was written, so he was just amazed by their beauty but he also remarked that it would be something terrible to be able to read them and feel trapped - he imagines them covered with latin letters and he feels bad, ha ha... And it was exaclty what I felt the first times in Shibuya : thanks goodness, the beauty of the writing compensates the commercial pressure !... Another funny story : at one moment he says there is no way to avoid shopping here, and he already bought a full luggage of "souvenirs" so he is anxious to know if he will have to pay an additionnal fee for the weight when he leaves the country... Remind me something... And many random observations that can not leave my heart, like the comparison between the Japanese women's feet in their tabi with the pretty legs of a faun... I think of this image everytime I see tabi now.

Well, his books about Japan are pure jewels and you have to read some of them (not all, it's impossible). He even became the first non-Japanese Japanese language teacher at Tokyo University (wow), got the Japanese nationality (wow-WOW) and married a Japanese lady (oh). He is famous in Japan for his traditionnal ghost stories, and legends, but under his Japanese name of Koizumi Yakumo, so many of my Japanese friends even did not know that he was not a native. He stayed in Japan until he died in 1904.

Lafcadio was a pure genius, and a real Japan-lover. Everything he wrote about this country and this society is mind-stricking and soul-opening and I admire this guy more than I can say, especially in English.

This is why, I had to go to this tiny little garden between Shin-Okubo station and Meiji-dori they call "Koizumi Yakumo Garden" and bend the knee in front of my hero. The garden was not especially beautiful but I liked the statue. Next time I will go to his grave.

 

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A few dark clouds, however. Even if Lafcadio Hearn found a real home and a family in Japan, as well as a constant source of inspiration, there were some moments he became sick of being there. A Japanese writor said that in Japan, his Greek temperament and his French culture became froze-bitten like a flower in winter. But my concern is more about these words he had about the Japanese :

"What is large about them? His poems, which are only tiny pictures? his deepest sentiments of heroism which he shares with the ant and the wasp ! his romances, mediaevally tiresome, yet without any of the strength of our own medievalism ! Always details, details infinite in number and variety, infinitesimal in character. And to-day, what is his tendency ? To make everything that he adopts small
philosophy, sciences, material, arts, machinery; everything is modified in many ways, but uni formly diminished for Lilliput. And Lilliput is not tall enough to see far. Cosmic emotions do not come to Lilliputians. Did any Japanese ever feel such an emotion? Will any ever feel one ?" (Letter to Basil Hall Chamberlain)

I am disturbed. Cosmic emotions. That's the point.

Oh Lafcadio, at least I am not alone in this.

 

(a very complete webpage about Hearn's life in French, here)

4 janvier 2012

Dragonish 2012

dragon year effect

Happy Dragon Year !

 

 

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