When the Japanese brand Trunk opened its first hotel in central Shibuya in 2017, its Western-influenced rooms, with their calming neutral palettes, were a respite from one of the world’s busiest neighborhoods. At the same time, the cozy, moodily dark lobby was conceived to be a communal social space — rare for Japan, a country where lodging tends to be more cloistered — for locals and tourists to work on their laptops or drink highballs with friends. If that place was about bringing people in, Trunk’s next one, a 25-room property opening Sept. 1, is meant to draw eyes outward, particularly toward verdant Yoyogi Park, a 133-acre green space in northern Shibuya that the new concrete-clad, seven-story building faces. With balconies extending from every room and a rooftop pool club — another rarity for a Tokyo hotel — the idea is not only to bring visitors to a rising corner of the district that’s increasingly crowded with cool shops and restaurants but also to give guests a chance to relax away from the thrum while gazing out over the tree line at the metropolis beyond. The design, led by the Japanese architect Keiji Ashizawa’s firm, with interiors by the Danish company Norm, has all kinds of warm wood touches and beige textures, and the restaurant will serve pizza and Italian food: Not at all rare in Tokyo these days, but comforting nonetheless. Rooms from about $419; trunk-hotel.com.
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R. Crumb’s Utilitarian Tribute to His Wife
During the summer of 2022, I was lucky enough to visit the home of the comics artist couple Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Robert Crumb in a remote town in the south of France. Kominsky-Crumb, in good health at the time of our meeting, died of pancreatic cancer less than six months later. She was, with apologies to Crumb, the more personable of the two. This shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with their work, which frequently focuses on their relationship, husband and wife each drawing themselves: In a 2021 comic, the “Crumb Family Covid Exposé,” Crumb announces in the first panel, “I’m becoming radioactive with extreme paranoia!!” In the next panel is Kominsky-Crumb, calmly striking a yoga pose while vacuuming the house and thinking, “Due to naturally high serotonin level, daily yoga, mindful eating and playing with grandkids … I remain high energy and positive!”
When they were living in California in the 1980s, struggling to support themselves, Kominsky-Crumb taught aerobics and fitness classes on…
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