The Night of Destruction

The legendary Japanese rock group, X Japan, is back with another legendary gig in the Tokyo Dome today.

The opening song is The Last Song, literally the last song they played during their final concert at the Tokyo Dome 10 years ago. I believe it shivers every X Japan fan when vocalist Toshi starts singing with Yoshiki's piano. His departure from the group was the reason for their break-up a decade ago. He stopped being a rock vocalist and started taking a tour around the country to sing songs for those hurt mentally. His voice at this concert declares Toshi is back.

Drummer Yoshiki plays drums in public in Japan for the first time in ten years. As his drumming is physically too demanding, he collapsed quite a few times during the 1990s. Towards the end of X Japan's career, his doctors said he shouldn't play drums anymore.

Still, we are lucky enough to see him play drums (and destroy them) as before.

As an encore, they play Art of Life, a 29-minute long tune played live only twice in their concerts during the 1990s. During this performance, guitarist Hide, who died in 1998, is back on stage as a hologram. His death (officially diagnosed as a suicide, but no one believes it who knows him), was thought to make the reunion of X Japan impossible. But technology allows it to happen. X Japan is back with Hide on stage.

When the first movement of the tune (about 15 minute long) is over, drummer Yoshiki collapses. Which terminates the concert. He composed Art of Life as a piece reflecting his own life. Despite its length, the tune is very fast. Yoshiki needs to keep drumming super-quick as if it was self-destruction. Tonight it is indeed.

Intentionally or not, today's concert is aptly titled The Night of Destruction.

Ice

Kosmic Blue


Get Down, Get Down, Get Down


Moon Child


Slow Love


These are the songs I listened to many times during the 1990s. The guitarist of Ice, Kazuyuki Miyauchi, passed away at the age of 43 on 18 December, 2007 (which I learned just today). I hope his music will remain alive for ever. And I sincerely hope that his partner both in music and in life, Mayumi Kunioka (the vocalist of Ice, appearing in these videos), will soon overcome such a deep sadness.

And special thanks goes to Wingedlove, who uploaded these videos on Youtube.

See moroha5963's videos for more from Ice. Blue Moon, one of their latest pieces, is rather good.

Rest in peace, Miyauchi-san.

What lies behind China's success in poverty reduction (and perhaps a silent revolution in development economics)

A sporadic blog entry on development economics:

According to Martin Ravallion, Director of the Development Research Group of the World Bank, two-thirds of poverty reduction in China since 1981 took place in the 1980s, with 40 percent concentrated in the first three years. That was before foreign direct investment was encouraged. That was before international trade was opened up. That was before labor-intensive manufacturing sectors started growing.

The bulk of poverty reduction in China, therefore, should be attributed to agricultural productivity growth due to the introduction of the Household Responsibility System (HRS) around 1980. (The link between agricultural productivity growth and the HRS was established by Justin Lin, the new World Bank chief economist, in his paper published in AER in 1992.)

Mr Ravallion, in his working paper, mentions how Chinese political leadership pursues the promotion of economic development. They allow local governments to experiment new policies. If they succeed, such new policies are scaled up to the whole country. Interestingly, this sounds to me very similar to what Dani Rodrik and Esther Duflo advocate.

As is the case with all arguments on China's success in development, the biggest puzzle still remains. Why do top officials of the Chinese Communist Party have an incentive to promote development in a political system that cannot be called democracy in a standard way.

UPDATE (March 2, 2008): So it's not surprising that Justin Lin announces the trial-and-error approach to poverty reduction (HT: Dani Rodrik).

UPDATE 2 (March 2, 2008): Here's Justin Lin's view on development. Again it's not surprising given the Chinese path for poverty reduction described above.

Announcement

Added on August 17, 2008: I end up telling a lie to you...

I will stop updating Econoclasm.

As an assistant professor of economics, the number of things that distract me from publishing papers in academic journals of economics needs to be minimized. A trip back to Tokyo, and a great jazz performance in New Orleans, has invoked this kind of stoicism in my mind.

Occasionally, I may upload some photos especially when I make a trip. Also it may benefit myself to review development economics papers on this blog from time to time. But I cannot guarantee this.

I don't know how many of you read this blog, but thank you for your interest until today. I'll be back in six years time, after getting tenure as a professor of economics.

Royal Street in French Quarter at night

Nicholas Sanders Trio at Snug Harbor

Although I lack in sleep, am tired from interviewing job candidates for our Institute, and need to take a flight in the morning the following day, I insist on going to a jazz club before leaving New Orleans. After having dinner with my colleagues and being told that they go back to the hotel, I walk to Snug Harbor on my own.

Time Out says there are two best contemporary jazz clubs in the town. One of them appears to be closed down as its official website address takes me to a porn website. The other, Snug Harbor, looks very professional: the website says, "We are not a disco. Do not speak. Do not take photo during the performance."

After a 30-minute pleasant walk through Royal Street in the French Quarter from my hotel, I arrive at Snug Harbor. The walls, the ceiling, and the floor are all made of old wood, looking slightly decrepit but in a pleasant and stylish way. The street it faces seems to be a jazz club street: there are two more jazz clubs here. When I enter, on the left spreads a dinning space, on the right a bar space. The doorman tells me, "For the music, walk in the bar to the end." Paying 12 dollars, I enter the music room.

A little cozy space has a stage just enough for three pieces (piano, bass, and drums) with several tables on the ground floor and on the balcony. The capacity doesn't seem to exceed 100. I take a seat on the balcony from which I can see all the three pieces at one glance. Some youngsters are hanging around the piano on the stage for a while, apparently discussing which piano phrase is cool. They look reserved and devoted with their thin physique suggesting some sort of stoicism, very different from ordinary youngsters in the English-speaking countries.

The performance begins slightly after 10pm. After the introduction by the club owner(?), the pianist, the bassist, and the drummer walk up to the stage. They are among those youngsters hanging around on the stage before.

From the very first tune, the trio impresses me to the extreme. Each of them, especially the pianist and the drummer, is amazingly skillful for their age. The pianist's right and left hands sound like different two individuals. The drummer, when he plays solo, maintains the rhythm in each part of the solo, something I never experienced before for a drum solo. Each of them plays independently, claiming their own presence without sacrificing the others'. The balance between individualism and harmony is maintained at the level where only a very minor deviation by any of the three players destroys it. And the three deliver the sheer energy of youth. It's contemporary jazz. It's not easy to understand. It's abstract. But I do feel the harmony, the rhythm, and the melody. I never felt this way before when I listened to jazz.

The trio plays about 8 tunes. Not a single tune bores me. They even play a fantastic mellow tune in the middle. Although the trio's strength appears to be uplifting pieces of music, they are versatile. The only caveat to me is the bass. His sound often sinks between the two expressive sounds of the piano and the drums. But towards the end of the performance, the bassist stands on par with the other two.

The trio's name is Nicholas Sanders Trio: Nicholas Sanders on piano, Max Moran on bass, and Joe Dyson on drums. I really want a CD that records their live performance.

Just popping up at a jazz club on Sunday night takes me to such a high level of jazz performance in New Orleans. I'm awed by the town's ability to churn out great jazz talents almost a century after the beginning of jazz.

Review on Hilton New Orleans Riverside

Overall it's an unpleasant three-night stay at the hotel. My room (#4020) has: no kettle or coffee maker (but with ground coffee beans and tea bags), an alarm clock one hour ahead without any buttons for adjusting time (so I woke up one hour earlier than necessary), ants hiding beneath the alarm clock and strolling on the washing basin, a shower head fixed to the wall, a wireless Internet connection costing as much as 11.95 dollars per 24 hour. The only good thing is three mirrors surrounding the washing basin so I can easily look at the back of my head when I set my hair.

Restaurants downstairs are unpleasant, too. A breakfast buffet tastes horrible (bad coffee, bad bacon, bad smoked salmon, bad pan cake) except for spiced potato cubes sauteed with peppers and onions, but it still costs more than 20 dollars (including VAT and tips). A dinner and another breakfast at this same restaurant takes unnecessarily long before the waiter serves a light meal that I order, because I want to eat quickly. The hotel's cafe "proudly serves" Starbucks Coffee (that's what they put on the cup label).

The hotel effectively monopolizes eating and drinking options: we need to take an at least 10 minute walk to eat/drink outside the hotel. Plus the breakfast restaurant 10 minutes away is uninspiring (cheaper though).

For the sake of fairness, there are some good things. Checking out without queuing at the reception is a good thing. Another restaurant, Drago's, serves an excellent Crescent City Shrimp, grilled in rosemary-filled butter sauce.

I stay at the hotel for the business purpose (our Institute interviews newly-minted PhDs at the hotel from 10am on Friday till 1pm on Sunday). Ideally, then the hotel should provide excellent food options and comfy bed rooms. It spectacularly fails to do so. Even if I was in New Orleans for tourism, the location is not good at all as it takes at least 15 minute walk to the French Quater.

If you go to New Orleans, this Hilton hotel should certainly be out of question.

Tokyo Midtown

One of the newest additions to Tokyo's landscape (and places for shopping-spree and tasteful eating experiences) is Tokyo Midtown. I have a cup of superb, luxurious matcha green tea which costs nearly 1,000 yen (6.25 euro) at Kyo Hayashiya.

There is a floor of the building wholly devoted to interior goods and furniture, which is unheard before in Tokyo, where people have mainly been preoccupied with foods and clothes. Most of the stores on the floor, however, are pretty boring, especially when I compare them to those in Stockholm. The presentation is of poor quality. Each piece of furniture may be well-designed, but the shop managers don't seem to know how to present them in combination. There are very few surprises and learnings on how to decorate your rooms. If it looks stylish, the store mostly sells very expensive furniture. In terms of interior design, Tokyo is far lagging behind Stockholm.

The design of Tokyo Midtown does not look particularly deep. When I visit Roppongi Hills a 10 minute walk away afterwards, I do feel a difference. The design of Roppongi Hills is much more elaborate, not straightforward at all.

Shiodome

Tokyo has undergone urban redevelopment projects in many of its areas during the past decade. I think the first was Ebisu Garden Place, followed by Shinjuku Southern Terrace, Ueno station, Shibuya Mark City, Akihabara station and its surrounding area, Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown, and Marunouchi.

Shiodome is another example of this. Unlike other newly-refurbished areas of Tokyo, however, Shiodome feels inorganic because it simply consists of several skyscrapers and is cut off from the surrounding area resulting in the lack of historical and cultural connotations. Visiting the area this time makes me re-consider this impression I have had.

On Christmas Day, I visited one of those Shiodome skyscraper, Caretta Shiodome, to see its Christmas illumination at the entrance to the building. It employs 300,000 light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs, mostly blue, creating an image of ocean waves. The ocean of blue LED light is quite impressive. See the photos I took.

The illumination also features a 10-minute light and music show produced by Hideki Togi, a Japanese gagaku musician, which sucks. Gagaku is a Japanese traditional music for imperial court. Hideki Togi has reinvented it by incorporating pop music. The music played during the show, however, mainly features Western-style sounds with very little of the gagaku elements. Perhaps he is scared of the general public's response. This is very disappointing. If he composed a more traditional piece of music for this illumination, the cross-over of totally Western-inspired Christmas illumination and Japanese noble music would sure be mind-blowing.

After buying matcha castella of Gion Tsujiri tea shop inside Caretta Shiodome, I head for Shinbashi station to go home without expecting anything more. But I discover another set of Christmas illumination in front of the Nittele Tower (another skyscraper in Shiodome which houses the headquarters of Nihon Television, one of the four private nation-wide television channel networks). This one is totally white, creating an image of snow-covered woods. It's actually more beautiful than Caretta Shiodome's blue illumination. See the photos I took.

Obviously, the two skyscrapers in Shiodome compete with each other for the best Christmas illumination. There are some street performances, too, adding a more organic feeling to the Shiodome area.

Today, I go back to Shiodome, this time with Reiko, for a drink. We climb up the Shiodome City Center, yet another skyscraper in the area. On the 41th floor sits Japanesque Bar Gekka. The bar represents what Tokyo is all about: the combination of Japanese tradition, advanced technology, and Western culture taken to the next level by Japanese sensitivity.

It represents Japanese tradition because, first of all, customers need to take off their shoes to enter the bar. Reiko and I sit at a counter without folding our legs. And the bar serves what we call tsumami, small dishes accompanied with alcohol drinks, catering to the Japanese way of drinking. We usually don't just drink. We eat proper food, too, something more than just some snacks.

It represents advanced technology because, thnaks to the skyscraper, a glittering night view of Tokyo, mainly the Ginza area, spreads in front of us. Such a bar is hard to find in Europe where skyscrapers are scarce. (Even if there are, like in London, the owners of skyscrapers do not seem to be interested in making their top floors accessible to the general public.)

It represents "Western culture taken to the next level by Japanese sensitivity." The food the bar serves is deep-fried almond-crumb chicken. Almond is a Western thing, but chicken is deep-fried in Japanese style, which means a much better taste than its Western equivalent. The bar stocks almost all kinds of alcohol drinks: champaign, beer, wine, whisky, brandy, sherry, gin, volka, rum, tequila, and cocktails in addition to Japanese sake and shochu. For each, a wide range of choices are available. A bartender serving us manages to make proper glasses of cocktail. Although he doesn't know a cocktail I liked at Pet Sounds Bar in Stockholm (he says Nothern Europe is at the fore-front in the world of cocktail), the fact that he looks quite dejected by his failure to meet my request suggests that he's really professional.

So it's a pleasant evening. Shiodome rocks!

Ginza after dark

Neon lights in Ginza appear to get brighter and brighter year by year.

Kagurazaka

Kagurazaka is an area of Tokyo lesser-known to foreign visitors to Japan's capital. It's located within the Yamanote loop, to the north-west of the Imperial Palace. Until the Second World War, the area thrived as a place for geisha. Today we still see the reminiscences of those days: narrow cobbled streets lined with Japanese traditional-style restaurants. In addition, French restaurants are scattered around (partly because there is a French language school nearby), and back streets maintain the atmosphere of Tokyo's residential areas until the 1970s, a rarity in the ever-changing central Tokyo.

Yoo-chan, one of my college mates, and I have lunch at Torijaya Honten. It's a udon-suki restaurant dating back from 50 years ago, facing Kagurazaka Street opposite to Bishamonten Shrine (4-2 Kagurazaka Shinjuku-ku: 03 3260 6661). We take off our shoes and sit down at a table with a gas cooker at the center. (There is a hole below the table so you don't need to let your legs folded.) A waitress brings a large pan topped with chicken, seafoods, quail's eggs, vegetables (17 kinds of food in total), and udon noodle soaked in kelp-and-bonito soup stock. (See a photo by JUN / LDK.) As the pan heats up, foods are getting cooked, and we are ready to start eating. The soup stock is so superb (light-tasted but very rich in taste) we don't need to dip foods into anything. The udon noodle is unusually so thick by Japanese standards (see another photo by JUN / LDK) it never becomes too soft by being soaked in boiling soup until the very end of the meal.

The lunch is very filling and one of the best meals I have had in my life, and we pay only 1,400 yen (about 9 euro) for each of us. This is Tokyo.
Torijaya Hoten's signboard at night

We then stroll around the area, the first time for both of us: Tokyoites often keep going to the same areas of Tokyo, never attempting to explore different areas within the city. We only find restaurants, bars, and cafes in Kagurazaka though almost all of these look stylish in a traditional way (i.e. not showy). Perhaps you should come to this area only when you are hungry and thirsty.

Going up Kagurazaka Street, there is Akagi Shrine, inside which the Akagi Cafe has been open since April of 2006. Although, unlike Christian churches and Islamic mosques, Japanese shrines and temples often have food stalls on their yard, a Western-style cafe inside the shrine is quite unusual.

The Cafe's atmosphere is quite nostalgic: each piece of furniture seems to date back to the early and middle 20th century, placed in a way that the cafe looks stylish as a whole. Revealing to me as I haven't seen such a place before. Each piece is old and uninspiring, but once properly placed they look pleasantly cool.


It's not just the interior, though. A piece of home-made raspberry pound cake and a cup of Toarco Toraja coffee offer me a pleasant feeling. (Toarco Toraja is an Indonesian coffee bean. After the Dutch left Indonesia, the production of beans became stagnant. Then Key Coffee, a Japanese coffee company, got involved in the restoration of coffee prodution in Indonesia, and it names the beans Toarco Toraja.)

It's very unfortunate that the Akagi Cafe will close down in March next year. If you are lucky enough to visit Tokyo before that, do try to visit the Cafe.

On a more personal note, talking to Yoo-chan reminds me of my inclination to only use words that properly reflect my ideas and feelings. Ever since I moved to London five years ago, I was forced to abandon such a habit because my English vocabulary was not wide enough. By the standard I had until five years ago, sentences in this post, for example, are a complete compromise. Especially when it comes to words describing foods and taste, the English language is very poor. Maybe reading great English novels help me develop such vocabulary. But I probably never understand the way the authors of such novels feel about their experiences, deep in my heart, because I'm not a Westerner. As long as I keep writing and speaking in English, compromise is probably inevitable. In a way, it's sad, unacceptable. In another way, that's how people live in a foreign culture.

Ura-harajuku

This is a shop in Ura-harajuku (literally meaning the flip side of Harajuku). Looks like a traditional Japanese cafe or sweet store. No, it sells jewellery. But the name of each piece of jewellery is a Japanese word.

Ura-harajuku is probably Tokyo's most edgy area for making you look stylish. It's full of small, independent boutiques, and, interestingly enough, these stores are mostly for young men. When they sell both women's and men's, the ground floor is devoted for men: women should go upstairs. Unlike Marui Men in Shinjuku, which houses tons of men's boutiques in the 7-story building and follows each season's trend more or less (but still sells clothes unseen anywhere else in the world), each shop in Ura-harajuku offers its own style of gear. I manage to find a lot of clothes that I won't be able to find anywhere else in the world.

The area is also famous for hair salons. I have my hair cut at Coup de Vent. The hair stylist not only cuts my hair but also trims my eyebrows. She also massages my head and shoulders. My hair style catches up with young fashion-conscious men in Tokyo, where there are several hair catalogues for men on sale.

One more thing that deserves mention. Ura-harajuku has some kimono stores. Banjiro sells bespoke kimonos with contemporary patterns while Tokyo135 stocks more affordable ready-made and second-hand kimonos. Both of them kindly tell me what kimonos men can wear. Next time I will try to buy my first kimono.

Lunch in Tokyo

Either in London or in Stockholm, I find it difficult to have a budget lunch. London offers a wide variety of options which are all sandwiches. Stockholm serves pasta salad in a plastic bowl, in addition to sandwiches. But vegetables are not necessarily fresh, and pasta is soaked in water coming out of salad. (So I don't really understand the concept of pasta salad in Sweden. Why do you need to top salad on pasta?) And both London and Stockholm charges you at least 4.5 euro for such crappy lunch.

Tokyo is great in this regard. Budget lunch options include gyudon (soy-sauce marinated cooked beef topped on steamed rice), udon noodle soup, soba noodle soup, ramen noodle soup (these three noodles are all different), gyoza (Chinese dumplings), magurodon (tuna sashimi topped on steamed rice), curry rice, spaghetti (including Japanese-style: cooked tuna with soy sauce and grated daikon radish), and so forth. These lunch options are available from about 3 euro.

The photo above is the lunch I have in Omotesando. It costs 6.5 euro (including a cup of cappuccino and good service: they ask me whether I'd like to have cappuccino during or after the meal).

Who says Tokyo is the most expensive city in this world?

Tokyo Metro

Every station of Tokyo Metro has a sign board showing which train carriage is the nearest to the staircase or the lift for exit. If there are more than one exit in the station, it also shows which exit is for where and for changing to this line or that line.

Another example of the stark contrast between Tokyo and London, where you often end up a staircase for passangers taking trains rather than for exits.

Shiodome Nihon Television Tower Xmas illumination 2007

Caretta Shiodome Xmas illuminations 2007

One Night Dejavu

1. Loveless
2. Dejavu
3. Jesus
4. Slave
5. End of Sorrow
6. True Blue
7. Face to Face
8. Gravity
9. Ra-se-n
10. Providence
11. Moon
12. Shinya drum solo
13. J bass solo
14. Fate
15. Breathe
16. Storm
17. Desire
18. Time Is Dead
19. Rosier
20. Tonight
21. Silent Night (by the 6th member of Luna Sea) / I For You
22. In My Dream
23. Believe
24. Mother
25. Precious...
26. Wish

New Chuo Line train carriage

Another view of Tokyo familiar to me has gone. Orange train carriages for the JR Chuo Line have been replaced with new ones. What amazes me about this new shining silver train carriage with orange lines is the electric displays on the side of the carriage (see the photo above). They not only show the destination of the train (white letters on top row) but also the name of the next station (yellow letters on bottom row). As the JR Chuo Line changes the stations it stops depending on whether it's a weekday or a weekend or whether it's during the morning rush hour or not, this is quite helpful for passengers.

Light-years away from the train carriages running in London Underground, for which passengers taking Disrict, Circle, Hammersmith & City lines (all of which confusingly run on the same rail track) ask each other which station the train goes to.

Audi Forum Tokyo

Audi's car show room in between Harajuku and Shibuya areas. There is a cafe (free of charge) on the second floor.

Contrast this to the Rikugi-en Garden below. This is Tokyo, the coexistence of super modernity and uniquely Japanese tradition.

Rikugi-en Garden

Rikugi-en is a Japanese garden dating back from the year of 1702. People say it is one of the two most beautiful in Tokyo (the other is Koishikawa Koraku-en). The best seasons to visit the garden are either spring (with cherry blossoms blooming) or autumn (with leaves turning red and yellow). In fact, I don't really enjoy it under cold winter weather with most leaves having fallen. But I manage to take some nice photos:

See japan-guide.com for how to get there. It's located off the beaten track for foreign tourists in Tokyo.