A bustling city, its inhabitants,
and a novelist’s sense of smell

　Whenever I come to Ginza on an evening errand, I like to look at the Ginza Maison Hermès building glowing softly from the inside, like a paper lantern. I go in and make my way to the fragrance department on the ground floor, where I like to spend some time trying out the perfumes. Once, when I visited the Hermès Paris Faubourg Saint Honoré store, I heard a story about bundles of Russian leather that had been recovered from a 200-year-old shipwreck.

The leather, which had been treated by a special tanning process, was there on display. I remember how the sweet smell—a smoky, almost fermented aroma—wafted through the air. It smelled so good, I took several deep breaths to savour it. The scent I tried today is Violette Volynka, an eau de toilette inspired by that Russian leather and blended with the floral scent of violets. When I smelled it, I was all of a sudden brought back to the spring of 2020, when we were all told to stay home as much as possible because there was still so much about Covid that we didn’t know.

Most shops were closed, and so all scent had disappeared from the city—the smells of seasonings and soup stock drifting out from curry and noodle restaurants, the artificial sweetness of the soap stores, the funk of stale water, the hint of a cigarette or perfume that lingers in the air after someone walks by. Without these smells, both pleasant and unpleasant, it felt as if I was all alone on the streets. It made me realize how my sense of smell enhances the time I spend wandering around the city. And so, as I revelled in the fragrance of that wonderful eau de toilette, I was reminded of how important aroma is to my life.

The rejuvenating power
of herbal tea

At the back of Ginza Maison Hermès’s 2nd floor is a space that used to be a champagne bar, which I visited only once, and is now a café. A member of the café staff told me that Hermès also operates a farm where the workers compost food scraps from the café to return their nutrients to the fields.

The infusions served at the café are brewed from fresh herbs such as lemon verbena, strawberry mint, orange mint, apple-scented geranium, skeleton rose-scented geranium, marigold, stevia, and anise hyssop. Every cup of tasty herbal tea has a cool, refreshing flavour with just a hint of bitterness. When I brew tea at home, I sometimes pluck a sprig from the rosemary plant on my balcony and add it to the tea. I like how it refreshes and energizes me, so it’s something I turn to when I’m focused on my writing.