Tokyo is very much a city of special-purpose neighborhoods. We decided to make this day the day of paper. Gwen’s got a bit of a paper fetish. I vaguely recalled that \u00e6\u2014\u00a5\u00e6\u0153\u00ac\u00e6\u00a9\u2039 was the paper neighorhood, and so we hopped on the train and went there.<\/p>\n
Well, strike one for my memory. I should have checked more carefully beforehand (now I’m not sure which neighborhood I was looking for, but I know I’d been there before). We did find a small shop that specialized in \u00e6\u203a\u00b8\u00e9\u0081\u201c supplies; I asked one of the clerks if there were other shops in the neighborhood that sold paper, and she gave me directions that seemed clear enough, but didn’t lead me anywhere I recognized.<\/p>\n
So we gave up on that and headed for \u00e7\u00a5\u017e\u00e4\u00bf\u009d\u00e7\u201d\u00ba<\/a>, the book neighborhood. We spent hours exploring the mind-blowing used-bookstore mall, \u00e7\u00a5\u017e\u00e4\u00bf\u009d\u00e7\u201d\u00ba\u00e5\u008f\u00a4\u00e6\u203a\u00b8\u00e3\u201a\u00bb\u00e3\u0192\u00b3\u00e3\u201a\u00bf\u00e3\u0192\u00bc, eight stories of used booksellers, many specializing one one thing or another (children’s books, new-age books, ephemera, girlie books, etc). <\/p>\n We stopped \u00e5\u00a4\u00a7\u00e5\u00b1\u2039\u00e6\u203a\u00b8\u00e6\u02c6\u00bf<\/a> in an antique bookstore that I had somehow never visited and found some amazing books, including many that seemed to be basically clip-art books over a century old. Some of these were in color, and clearly beyond anything we could afford. But Gwen found one in black and white going for ¥8000 that sorely tempted her. She put it back and decided to think about it while we went to \u00e4\u00b8\u2030\u00e7\u0153\u0081\u00e5\u00a0\u201a<\/a>, the huge bookstore for new books, just around the corner. She picked up a Japanese phrase book by that denizen of the Tokyo demimonde, Boye de Menthe. We left, went to a nearby Starbucks (hey, Starbucks is probably the only place in Japan that is no-smoking), and Gwen though some more on that antique book. We went back the store, and after some internal debate, she bought it. While she was at the register, I found a boxed volume in the shape of a brick. It was an ancient Japanese-English dictionary. Again, much too expensive to contemplate, and apparently even older than the first edition of the Green Goddess (which probably wasn’t even green back then). I marvelled briefly and carefully put it away.<\/p>\n Somehow from here we made our way to \u00e4\u00ba\u00ba\u00e5\u00bd\u00a2\u00e7\u201d\u00ba, where Gwen appropriately ate a \u00e4\u00ba\u00ba\u00e5\u00bd\u00a2\u00e7\u201e\u00bc\u00e3\u0081\u008d, and from there, we somehow made it back to Nihonbashi, and ran across the very paper store that the woman at the calligraphy store was directing me to. \u00e5\u00b0\u008f\u00e6\u00b4\u00a5\u00e5\u2019\u0152\u00e7\u00b4\u2122<\/a>. Quite a store. Gwen spent a lot of time marvelling at the \u00e5\u008d\u0192\u00e4\u00bb\u00a3\u00e7\u00b4\u2122, and picked out quite a few samples to get as gifts for the folks back home.<\/p>\n