Science Fair for February 18th-24th

This week's Science Fair is slightly Asia-tinged, since I have been gallivanting about Manhattan finding the island's best Japanese restaurants, reading ChopsticksNY magazine despite the grammatical and spelling errors, and hell, we all love Asia to death.

-The Japan Times seeks out Tokyo's greatest themed bars. Now, shockingly enough, I have never been to any of those awesome-sounding places (GOTHIC LOLITA BAR WITH DELIGHTFUL COCKTAILS, you should live only in my mind) although I have spent a significant portion of my life playing in Tokyo. I did end up at once place in Kabuki-cho a couple of years back for my birthday, called "Yousei no Mori (Fairies' Forest)" that was fascinating, but strange, which pretty much sums up a lot about Tokyo. All of the wait staff wore shredded, foofy prom and wedding dresses with fairy wings and Converse. Needless to say, the food was overpriced and tiny, we had to leave and have hotpot at a markedly less swanky place. The next year's birthday was spent in a Tahitian-themed place with blue cocktails and horse meat carpaccio wrapped around cantaloupe chunks. God, Tokyo is such a trip, I love it.

-Happy Lunar New Year, everyone! I Shot the Chef has yin-yang sables for you. They are so adorable, I just can't get enough. Are they better than mooncakes? Maybe. My brother got food poisoning once from eating a box of possibly-old mooncakes, so there. You know, just in case you needed to Westernize Chinese culture a little bit more.

-Back to Japan, have you seen this fancy new Otoko-mae brand tofu in your local Japanese grocery store? My grandmother has been going on and on about how popular this new, hip tofu is in Japan and California. It's smooth, close to silken in texture but the main draw is entirely superficial. Namely, the shape of the packaging is so attractive and the brush-drawn anime dude on the label is pretty sweet. They're supposed to be marketing to men, but I can guarantee you that it's all ladies buying up that tofu like hotcakes.

-New York Magazine reports on Five New Yorkers Who Wear Only One Color Every Day. In the elevator at work the other day, some ladies were complaining about how everyone always dresses so drably in the winter, all in black or generally colorless. I realized as I stood there, zooming up thirty floors, that I was entirely monochromatic that day. What, monochomatism is so much easier than standing in front of the dresser in the morning wondering if anyone will notice that the tiny stripes in your blouse so cleverly match the stitch detail in your new shoes.

-On a more serious note, have you seen the World Press Photo of the Year for the 2007? It is quite breathtaking, and hearkens back to the trench warfare of our previous epic wars. It's amazing. What do you think, does it sum up your 2007 pictorially?

Have a great week, everyone!