Tokyo Metropolitan Library

I enjoyed meeting my friend Tony Laszlo for lunch in Hiroo last week when I made a run down there for a month’s supply of Norwegian goat cheese. A grocery store there that tends to the families of the many embassies in the area (including the Norwegian one) sells the big full size blocks of the toxic brown substance I love to cover my sandwiches with. Although our lunch of tea-flavored gruel was no match for a post-lunch snack combination of his rye bread and my cheese, we enjoyed a good talk in the park at Hiroo. We also stopped by the Tokyo Metropolitan Library which has its central branch in the park. I love this library and used to hang out there when I was studying Japanese in Yokohama years ago. Apparently they have wireless access in the library now, but I think you need an account with some commercial service. Also, I’m told they have a lot of materials in their closed stacks which you would normally only find at the Diet Library. So if there is anyone who is tired of the lines and hassle there, you might want to try the library in Hiroo, with its view over the park, as an alternative. Tony and I happened to get there while the cherry trees were blossoming outside. Today the blossoms have mostly fallen, covering much of Tokyo’s concrete in a thin blanket of pink petals.