Chillin', sippin', and listenin'

It's been a pretty good weekend. Monday is some sort of holiday in Japan, so we got the day off. Today Alanna and I went to Shibuya to visit a really unique kissaten. A kissaten is a Japanese style coffee house. Before we visited it, we were very hungry after arriving in Shibuya, so we ate at a very, very tiny Indian restaurant ran by two Indian fellas. They made the naan right in front of us, and man, that curry was HOT. I dug it a lot! Then, we walked around and visited the Hachikou statue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachikou) right in front of the station. Anyways, after that, we made our way to the kissaten.

Now, this kissaten is a little unique. Their specialty is playing classical music. Upon entering the kissaten, the atmosphere is very dark, and all the chairs and tables are facing in one direction to emulate a concert. In the front of it are two gigantic speakers that hand from the wall, with an endless amount of records and CD's of music! You are not allowed to talk in this kissaten, to add even more of a concert atmosphere. The cheapest coffee was 500 yen (five bucks), but it was worth it. We arrived a little after the beginning of a Mozart piano concerto (I'm not sure which one, or if it's even Mozart, but I'm pretty sure it's him; sounded familiar from music history). After that, they played Ravel's arrangement of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, followed by something I didn't know, followed by the fourth and fifth movements of Mahler's Fifth, then a Dvorak piano trio, and then Adam Khachaturian's Spartacus. As a piece is playing, the worker props up the record sleeve on the wall so you can tell what is being played. At the end of the piece, the worker gets on the loudspeaker and speaks in a very low voice over what was just played, ala Alec Baldwin. It's really cool because it's totally chill to bring a laptop, homework, or just chill while listening to excellent music.  Listening to the last piece was cool because I never even heard of Khachaturian, but we decided to leave during the middle of the piece because it was growing late. However, I wrote down the composer's name and work so I can listen to it later!

I was told (by Joe, I believe) to never go to the same place twice, so as to maximize the experience of where you're at. And in Tokyo, this advice is very important because you can live here an entire lifetime and still not visit everything. But, I will make an exception with this kissaten :)