My love-hate relationship with the NortheastJune 7th, 2007 by Joe Jones |
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Roy is back home in New Jersey for the time being, while I’m in Philadelphia whiling away the last month and a half before the bar exam. I’m looking forward to heading back to Tokyo in August, but one thing is for sure—there will be a few things I miss about this part of America. Certainly not the food or the security. But the architecture alone will be something of a loss:
It’s definitely a trade-off: majestic moments for steady fascination. Ah well, this is why God invented frequent flyer miles.
June 7th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Preach it. Although Tokyo’s architecture is growing with me, even if it does lack the Greco-Roman glory of 19th century America.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Mind you, Europe does this sort of thing even better.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
What about recent Marunouchi with it’s pseudo-Greco Roman buildings?Or perhaps Potemkin village like Makuhari?Anyway enjoy your stay back in states.
June 7th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
You won’t miss the street meat and the pretzels? For shame, Joe. For shame… (Actually, I hate the pretzels.)
In the two years since I left, I don’t think I’ve ever for a moment missed anything about Philadelphia. And I’m anticipating that I’m going to like my next stop, Kansas City, quite a bit more as well.
June 8th, 2007 at 2:41 am
[...] As Joe mentioned the other day, I am back in New Jersey for the time being. I’ve just noticed how many weeks it has actually been since I’ve updated anything here, between a couple of weeks of travel, a couple of weeks of being extremely ill, a couple of weeks of playing tourguide to my mom and her boyfriend in Japan, and a couple of weeks of reading and getting graduate school related application stuff together-and topping it all off with trans-hemispheric relocation, a birthday, and various other odds and ends I have completely neglected this space here. So, while I have a few things that I want to write about, and a large number of photographs I want to post from my last several weeks in Japan (for this year anyway), in honor of my return to good old New Jersey, below are some choice quotes from a book of travel writing by the late humorist Irvin S. Cobb entitled Some United States (1926) purchased just this afternoon from the $1 shelves outside the famous Strand bookstore in The City. As the title of this post implies, today I bring you excerpts from the chapter on the great state of New Jersey. [...]
June 8th, 2007 at 8:48 am
Jade: Seconded.
Aceface: You’re right about Marunouchi. I lived pretty close by last year, and I was always going for evening walks around the Imperial Palace to enjoy the buildings, like MacArthur’s old headquarters:
Nathan: The pretzels and “wooder ice” are actually kind of growing on me (especially since I live in Souf Philly and I’m practically surrounded by them), but I’ve long since gotten sick of the street meat.
June 8th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Haven’t been to Marunouchi recently, though I am looking forward to the completion of the Tokyo Station restoration.
Nice pic of the Die-Itty-Bitty. “I LOVE the night lighting on this building: it should be a supervillain’s lair.” Hmmm – are we meant to read anything into that about the General? Actually Tokyo has a really surprising number of impressive old western buildings. They were saved largely as the rich did not live in the shitamachi and the gardens would serve as firebreaks to some extent, but even so, it’s pretty impressive how many are left.
If I remember, Philly has one really impressive Town Hall or something similar, actually. Also, I think it’s very easy to forget that the US cities of the East Coast date back to the Baroque (one of Mozart’s librettists is buried in NY) and Neoclassical periods in Europe, so in many cases these aren’t cheap knockoffs but the real thing.