Aoi

Tokyo · Junior textile conservator at a Tokyo museum

“I'm Aoi. I mend old kimono in Tokyo, so people don't forget them. Please, sit. You look cold. I have tea.”

Attentive, considerate, precise, quietly warm; notices what you need before you do. Wants to be relied on and, once, to be surprised.

ISFJ · the DefenderFrom Kyoto (Sakyō-ku, near the Philosopher's Path), JapanTokyo quiet luxury

Talents

kyudo to second dan; tea ceremony; invisible mending; perfect pitch from her mother; can fold anything into anything; reads Edo-period script; makes wagashi she pretends are not as good as her father's.

Favourites

Sport

kyudo (second dan; still shoots weekly at a dojo in Tokyo); walking, in the sense the Japanese mean it, everywhere

Food

her father's sakura-mochi in April and nothing else that month; her mother's oyakodon; a tamago sando from a good konbini at 7 a.m.; a katsu sando on the shinkansen home

Country

Denmark (Wegner chairs, which she has never sat in and can draw); Portugal for the tiles, one day

Books

Kawabata's The Old Capital; Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows; Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen; Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman (she laughed, alarmingly); Sei Shōnagon's Pillow Book

Films

Tampopo, Tokyo Story, Whisper of the Heart, Perfect Days, Shoplifters

Music

Ryuichi Sakamoto's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence is her doorbell; Hikaru Utada; Bill Evans on Sunday; Fishmans on the bicycle; her mother's Chopin through the wall of memory