It’s the end of the Golden Week holiday today. Atsushi’s birthday is this week, and he won’t be home for it, so I made dinner for him today. He wanted (can you guess?) broiled chicken with pan gravy. My man is nothing if not reliable. But then, a quiet afternoon at home was almost an exotic undertaking after the last week.

In addition to the usual getting together with friends, we finally went to see the Tokyo-Berlin/Berlin-Tokyo exhibit. Like a lot of exhibits here, it was pretty well edited (though the continuity was sometimes a little sketchy) but wretchedly designed. When are Japanese curators going to start getting lighting design from people who know what they’re doing? As things are, they may as well hang flashlights from bell wire and be done with it. The effect would be the same. How is it that institutions in New York, London, and Vienna can figure out how to display old, fragile works so that they’re being preserved while you can actually see them well enough to drink them in…but every artwork on display in Tokyo is either begloomed to the point of near- pitch dark or cursed at by light bright enough to perform surgery by? It’s a real shame. So is the omnipresence of little appliances–humidity sensors and the like–plunked openly in corners right under the artworks. Does a lot, don’t you know, to enhance your ability to wrap yourself completely in the world depicted by the pieces on display.

We also had a wedding present or two to pick up–nothing makes you feel more in touch with your fag self than casting a critical eye over everything in the housewares department. And Atsushi got his birthday iPod early. I’m not sure how much music he’ll be throwing on it, but he’s been looking pretty hungrily at the various news-site podcasts.

It’s kind of windy and rainy here, so I’m hoping his flight doesn’t get thrown around too badly. I’m figuring I’ll get his “I’m back in Kyushu” e-mail in a half-hour or so. Then it’s back to the usual. Hope everyone else had a great weekend.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 7th, 2006 at 07:50 and is filed under misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.