tokyo snapshots: La Jetée · 2006-04-25 08:17
Probably the experience that sticks out the most was going to the small old-style bars in Golden Gai – a small district of 200 bars that have resisted being knocked down and replaced with high-rises.
La Jetée bar is foreigner-friendly – the owner is a french film buff, and speaks great Freanch and good English. Luckily, there was room for 4 of us – out of the 7 or 8 maximum you could fit in there. The bar is only 4 or 5 square metres, and you feel like the outside world may just not exist… for a few hours at least. Emerging from the small quietness to Shinjuku going home was quite something.
The cramped wonderful ambience is supplemented by the film posters from Marker, Goddard, Kaurismäki and others, the hundreds of cats sitting on top of the bottles stored for people, and the soundtrack of French 60s pop and 80s film synth soundtracks. There were books pushed in nooks as well, I discovered a great little book of modern (talking about ipods etc.) tanka poetry that was bilingual. Luckily (with help – thanks!) I managed to pick up a copy in Books 1st.
A wonderful place. I had to stop myself from buying a bottle for myself.
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Tokyo looks wonderful….
What was that about the cats, though – hundreds of cats in a tiny bar? Were they the Japanese ornamental cats as opposed to living ones, not cats in jars I hope. (there is a Japanese restaurant on Charlotte St with shelves of large glass jars containing what looks horribly like urine, all slightly different shades. I don’t dare ask what it is…)
Neko cats, wooden cats, cats made out of VHS cassettes (I’ll try and get photos of that off others)... just loads of (ornamental) cats.
I’ve been to the restaurant in Charlotte St – the bottles are shochu steeping different flavours.