Listen to Tokyo Jihen’s 2010 album Sports:

(Zettai zetsumei, another incredibly sad song that really doesn’t sound sad:)

(Denpa tsuushin, Season sayonara:)

And then listen to their brand new Dai Hakken. Here’s the video for “Atarashii Bunmei-kaika” (watch it before the copyright police show up!)

Note: The song title can be translated straightforwardly as “brand new civilization,” as shown in the video. However, the term bunmei kaika is specifically associated with the Meiji Revolution and Westernization — which might make you think a little differently about the music video.

A sign in the window says this outpost of Piccolo Cafe will open on April 18. The menu reveals coffee drinks and fancy breakfast sandwiches, paninis, pasta, and salads — all under $10, except for two lobster dishes. I don’t understand the claim that they’ve been in business “since 1938,” even though their first New York store opened last year.

In any case, this should be an upgrade, particularly since the competition for Italian food in the immediate area consists of Papa John’s and the somehow even worse Mondello’s Pizza (their chicken parm being an exception). Midtown Lunch reviewed another Midtown location and recommended the coffee and sweets, while slamming the food. But the bottom line is that this cafe replaces what used to be a Tasti-D-Lite. You can only go up from there.

Total distance: 3.9 miles.

Down Fifth Avenue to Madison Square Park. Madison Square Park = dog city.  Able to finish the latest draft of a short story and read 20 pages of Robert Olen Butler while in line at Shake Shack (single cheeseburger, regular Arnold Palmer).

Back down Fifth Avenue to buy a hundred bucks’ worth of Japanese clothes and gifts. And then: Union Square Greenmarket! First time I’ve gone this year. Yellow onions, and Hungarian cake with blueberries. Then down to East Village Cheese for turkey, cheddar, fish, H&H bagels.

Up Third, then up Irving Place. Teens slump on the sidewalks waiting for the Irving Plaza box office. I fall in behind a Southern college girl and a British man. On Irving and 17th, someone still keeps the faith:

I get a little closer:

Up to Gramercy Park. A couple confusedly pulls at the locked gate. Then it’s back to Madison Square for a breather. I look over my short story to see if there’s a better title, but what I’ve got fits. I retrace my steps up Fifth Avenue, past the Museum of Sex and some models having a wedding:

And a man walks around.

Four hours, 3.9 miles.

Subtle Tea on Madison on 30th Street has closed. This represents a double dip recession of sorts on Madison, where store after store has opened over the past year:

If you need your tea and cafe fix in the area, I recommend the cafe at the New York Open Center, also on 30th Street and Madison Ave.

And on 41st Street between Fifth and Madison, competition is increasing consumer choice (and arguably, consumer surplus).  Confronted with the entry of Sunrise Mart into the Japanese grocery/lunch spot/bakery market, both Cafe Zaiya and Yagura have broadened their choices.

Zaiya rolled out a new made-to-order food menu featuring delights like Hamburg Steak and crab cream croquette with curry!

While Yagura now has some sort of weekend ramen special:

In the inset, you can see shoyu ramen for $6.99 and miso ramen for $7.25. Haven’t had either yet, though.

-Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22

I’ve watched the 40~ or so story Setai hotel being built for many months now. Now, as the New York Times reports:

THE SETAI FIFTH AVENUE, between 36th and 37th Streets, is the latest in a string of large luxury hotels built during the recession to open in recent months. Its sprawling penthouses rent for a very nonrecessionary $15,000 a night (rates for the rest of the 157 rooms and 57 suites start at $545).

“I hope you can appreciate the understated excellence,” [managing director Guenter Richter] said as he walked through the snazzy Bar on Fifth and then up a circular staircase to the restaurant, Ai Fiori…

Well then!  Hotels can be a first step towards “residentialization” of a neighborhood, as their occupants need residence-y things like convenience stores and restaurants that stay open later.

The left side of this building is the former Book-Off space.

Meanwhile, on 41st Street between Fifth and Madison, a Sunrise Mart — a small local Japanese grocery store chain — is primed to move in. Though I go to the Sunrise Mart in the East Village, I have to wonder whether this will mean trouble for Yagura, the scrappy Japanese grocery store already on the block.  In any case, this brings the number of Japanese businesses on this particular block back up to four (Book-Off was on this block before moving elsewhere in Midtown earlier this year).

This is shit hot, folks. The band continues to noodle out in a few directions which could be stereotyped as typical for older rockers — more thoughtfulness, more minor keys, an urge to capture a sense of the national feeling and the concerns of today’s youth.  How far Gotoh and Co. have come from those early (bad) stadium rock days!

P.S. A daidai is a bitter orange. Lyrics and translation for the song here.

(McMillan’s comment at the end is, “If you want to marry a shoe, I’ll marry you” in response to a question about same-sex marriage.)

Mr. McMillan is now in the middle of his 15 minutes.  You can read about his music in the Times, read about some anti-Semitic remarks he made in the Atlantic, basically get your fill of McMillan at the Observer, and you owe it to yourself to view his website. But the most sublime McMillan-related thing I’ve seen is the video remix “The Rent is Too Damn UP”:

It’s not really funny. But it works if you’ve seen UP, as a play on that movie’s musings on change and urban gentrification. These themes especially resonate in New York City, where entire blogs are dedicated to the vanishing city and the former counter-cultural capital’s fall to the yuppie Reconquista (note the storefronts at 0:53 of the video — Sushi Pronto and Laser Tan).