I love the Nicholas Building. It is dilapidated in the best possible way. I wish I were a jeweller or artist so I could have a studio there. Complete camera roll here.

I don’t know how popular Izu is today, but very little of the tourist infrastructure looks built in the last 20 years, suggesting its popularity is waning. Along the coast, hulking slabs of 1960s hotel loom from the cliff faces. The style is part 1960s Austrian bath-cure resort, part Honolulu coast, and all Japan. Their rhythmic edifices remind me a bit of honeycomb – the same hotel room, 300 or 400 times. Many are in disrepair, some seemingly in disuse.

I drove along a toll road called the Skyline, which may win the prize for the worst signposted tourist road in the world. It is extremely popular with groups of motorcycle enthusiasts, but that’s about it. The route is winding, scenic and green.

Along the road, abandoned tourist pavilions sit derelict, weeds bulging through the cracks in the concrete. Decrepit third-rate restaurants crank out a meagre trade on passing desperation. I suspect the dilapidated golden-era tourist infrastructure speaks of a day when people still aspired to have holidays near home and foreign travel was not entirely democratic.

I stayed at a minshuku in Shimoda. Minshuku are B&Bs, Japanese style, except you usually have the evening meal too. In this case, an elaborate, delicious ten course banquet that I felt embarrassed for not being able to eat more of. There are only 10 guestrooms and they are traditional Japanese style with tatami and futons. The minshuku is a little dated, and is not glamorous, but it is comfortable and absolutely spotless.

The hospitality is generous and warmhearted. The Japanese word for hospitality is omotenashi which is very different from what people mean in the West when they say “I work in hospitality.” Working in hospitality is a sprinkling of customer service jargon over self-hatred and boredom. Omotenashi is commitment to, and pride in, your unfailing attention to the needs of the guest. If you get a chance to stay at a minshuku I would recommend it.
At night I went to the onsen of the Kanaya ryokan, also in Shimoda. It is a super-traditional wooden building with a simple large open wooden bath (possibly hinoki) and a rotenburo (open air bath.) A delightfully authentic experience. It is not far from Daitenji station.

Shimoda itself is a tourist oddity, highly recommended if standing on the place where milk was first drunk by humans in Japan is your idea of a good time. There is a strip of historic houses preserved by the canal which is quaint. I suspect there is a nice beach around but it was cold and miserable at the time so I didn’t get down there.

We were talking about Costco in my brand management class so I had to go and check it out for myself. Thanks to my friend JB and his wife E for showing me around the joint.

It is another world that exists according to another logic entirely.

In my world, I look to buy the smallest size of anything in groceries because I live alone and don’t use a lot of stuff. In the Costco World, sugar comes in 25kg bags.

In my world, $5699 Cartier watches are found in a luxurious branded environment where the retail experience is at least part of the brand associations. In the Costco world a $5699 watch is mere paces from the twelve pack socks.

In my world, you buy a Royal Doulton figurine, a treadmill, 10kgs of dogfood, artisan bread, a pair of jeans and a $150,000 emerald ring at different stores. In the Costco world there is no reason to leave the building.

In my world, you pay for things when you shop. In the Costco world you pay to shop: an annual membership fee. There is a fair bit of membership card flashing (to get in, at the register, at the entrance to the booze section, etc.)

From a cultural level, consumption at this level of conspicuousness is quite confronting. Supermarkets by comparison seem tame. The amount of product in a supermarket seems somehow manageable or imaginable. The sheer quantity of product at Costco is a monument to the project of consumption in our society and the sheer logistics of catering to the consumption habits we have. Of course, Costco deliberately sets out to generate patterns of consumption (there is nothing like buying in bulk to get you to consume in bulk). At times I felt a sense of revulsion and at others a profound sense of wellbeing. Costco may not be pleasurable, but it is certainly arousing and invokes feelings of human dominance.

All my photos here.

Yes I am one of those suburban types who likes to pour scorn on anything beyond the perimeter of my usual traversal – i.e. anything much beyond, say, Camberwell in the East, Yarraville in the West, Brunswick in the North and Brighton in the South. And that’s being generous. But I had heard whispers that the new Donny Shoppo (hereinafter DS) was a bit swisho and frankly I wanted to disprove such notions. The last time I went to DS was probably more than 10 years ago, and short of tearing the whole thing down I couldn’t see how you could improve it.

To paraphrase something I read somewhere recently, consumerism is based on the idea that we can all live like kings. (If someone knows who I’m paraphrasing, please tell me! It’s killing me!) Anyway, this insight seems to have been taken to considerable lengths at DS. With its sweeping spiral staircases, grand promenades, spacious air-conditioned vistas and momentously over-capitalised shops, its Chesterfield-infested “loungerooms” interspersed along the corridors and its concierge-style services, DS is certainly consumer indulgence on a massive scale.

The ranges of shops is awe-inspiring… Coles and Safeway, Myer and David Jones, Target and Big W. Not to mention suburban unlikelies including Bally, Calibre, Alannah Hill, MaxMara, Sass & Bide, Mecca, Lacoste, That Shop, Christensen Copenhagen… this is city-centre shopping comes to the suburbs.

Like a good acolyte of pomo architectural theory I want to start yawning about place – how these shopping behemoths are somehow “placeless”, they lack the variegation and patina of the “real” city.
On the other hand though, what about both/and? Isn’t this architecture entirely appropriate for this time and this place? And doesn’t variegation, all-too-often synonymous with civic dilapidation yet embraced by social elites as “texture” – hasn’t that now been shown to breed crime? DS steps lightly around such ideas. The shops’ interior designers have done a good job of de-homogenisation on many shops – Mecca has an intriguingly decontextualised barrel roof, some shops have timber shopfronts a la 19th century. But in the best nature of self-convenient pomo adherence it’s STILL incredibly disorienting and good luck finding your way out. There aren’t nearly enough maps. Oh but of course, play, not purpose. Oops I forgot. Only the right kinds of play and the right kinds of purpose, i.e. the ones that make you spend the most money.

We had a very nice latte and a passable pizza. We wandered round and we nearly bought stuff. We marvelled at the state-of-the-art parking guidance system. (follow the green lights!) And the acres upon acres of shops. And the attractive food hall. And the (rather distant) views of the city through the enormous glass walls of the Food Court. I felt slightly dirty and slightly dirtier when I realised I might be
enjoying myself.

BTW My photos are here, but they’re not terribly representative. You can get a better idea on Flickr.

I went to Hobart. It’s nice, but there isn’t a convenience store in the CBD and everything looks seriously shut at 8pm. One thing I like about Hobart is it spiritedness. In parts it epitomises the “cool village” – and the determination of its community to punch above its weight in cool. Another thing I like is its patina – Hobart’s not quite prosperous enough that the quirky, daggy, humdrum and lowbrow have been bred out of the inner sanctum. This makes for vareity and authenticity. Same thing for architecture – a patchwork of old and new styles, functional and stylised buildings, makes for interesting flaneurship. There’s quite a few gorgeous Brutalist/New International-esque office buildings that are in mint condition. And a few horrible designs thrown in. Lovely town. Well worth a visit. Check out my pics here.

I think someone needs to do an encyclopaedic book of art-shots of fading laundromats before they die the death their dilapidation points to. That, and those shopfront ethnic men’s clubs, with tobacco-stained lace curtains, a plywood bar, 80s cathode ray tube and vinyl seats. Until that time, check out the crummy point-and-shoots I took recently over at Picasaweb. The laundros in question are on Smith & Johnston Sts.