Asha rec’d this great cAfe – le café japonais i think it’s called. If you sit outside and look across the street there is sun like tag/painting on the wall. We chatted with the owner, I forgot her name, she’s from Japan, lived in Berlin, now in Arles, and just had a baby. Asked for recs from her and she gave us two great ones….
1st was – a gallery owned by a Japanese design guy that gives shows to people, and also shows his wares. And also— there is a collaboration of some sort w a German sorbet man, selling artisanal sorbets .. I think the gallery is called vague. (I had the fig with Szechuan peppercorns).
I loved the show they had up. About lichen. I feel like flash photography is very uncool rn and I think some of those were made with a flash so that was fun. The German guy, I forgot his name, but he was easily the weirdest/coolest person we’d met in Arles at that point. He was playing cool music at the gallery. Lo later told me he used to do sorbet at capitain petzel in Berlin (Captain pretzel).
many articles are written about the joys of talking to strangers (and how people overestimate how annoyed strangers will be if you talk to them). talking to the sorbet man, in a wonderful gallery and show, with good music, was certainly a highlight.
The second Rec the cafe woman told us was a performance for her son that would be at the cafe the next night. It is apparently customary in Japan to celebrate the first 100 days of a baby’s life with … well I’m not sure what. This particular celebration was going to be a ‘zen drumming’ performance.
it was great! Kenji, @kenji.zen.drumming on ig , was very very special! I tried uploading a vid but it didn’t work.
anyway! It was improvisational soft drumming and the baby giggled and slept and awoke and sat in her diaper in a very relaxed fashion. Another highlight sparkles
