AWT BAR

The colorful layers of the cocktail reproduce the three primary colors of light. They also depict the light information of Van Gogh’s self-portrait Summer 1887 as converted into a histogram and divided into layers. The cocktail pays homage to William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of calotype photography, who called his technique photogenic drawing (drawing with light), rather than photography. Please enjoy this refreshing reproduction of drawing with light.

A rock of ice is floating in a pale blue liquid in a round cocktail glass. The sight reminds me of a melting glacier I saw in Iceland. As I look down on the glass I start to feel as if I have become a giant, gazing at it from outer space. When I take a sip the subtle sweetness of fruit permeates my body along with the liquid. It brings back the sensation of being encompassed by the earth, which I had once felt inside a dormant volcano. As I chew on a slice of dried apple resembling the earth’s magnetic field, I reflect on the interconnections between this planet and me.

Two parallel worlds that start with the letter N. The world on the surface is Titan, the sixth and largest moon of Saturn. It is the only satellite in the solar system other than Earth that has a dense atmosphere, which is primarily composed of nitrogen, whose chemical symbol is N. Titan, completely dry and filled with nitrogen, represents the ochre-colored world of N. On the other hand, N or “e-nu” as pronounced in Japanese, can be reversed to “nu-e,” which is also the name of an imaginary nocturnal monster mentioned in The Tale of the Heike. Assigned a single character written by combining the characters for “bird” and “night,” the monster with the face of a monkey, body of a raccoon, arms and legs of a tiger, and the tail of a snake supposedly terrorized the people of Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital, night after night. The other blue-colored world is the underside of the world, which only appears after we fall asleep. When two opposing worlds meet, what will their taste be?

In wartime Tokyo there were two women who would spend the time together listening to Schubert’s Serenade in a dark room. Outside the room stood a cherry tree whose blossoms would form a bed of petals on the little pond next to it in springtime. As the war worsened, one of the women decided to leave Tokyo and return to her hometown of Shingu, in Wakayama. On her departure she gave her companion a bottle of her favorite perfume, Serenade, promising they would meet again. Even after the war’s end, the harsh demands of day-to-day life allowed no time for writing letters. The bottle of Serenade was finished. Now that the perfume was no longer in production, its scent was forever lost from the world. Eventually, the one who remained in Tokyo decided to return to Okinawa. After many years she wrote a letter to her former companion expressing her longing for their reunion. After even more years, the cherry blossoms were in season again. Her voice. She turns around. She smells the golden fragrance of Serenade she had so longed for.