Something interesting I recently learned about anatomy: There are 26 bones in the human foot, and if you break just one of them, your entire leg is basically useless.
So after a fall down some stairs at Shinjuku Station left me with a fractured fifth metatarsal, I was transformed from a critic-about-town into a grimacing and crabby stay-at-home, reduced to crawling around on the floor and in no shape to attend the Jan. 31 opening of Tokyo's new contemporary-art mecca, the Shinkawa Gallery building in Chuo Ward.
But thank goodness for friends -- for while my girlfriend Hikaru nursed me, two colleagues, dealers Kara Besher and Mathieu Ticolot, sent photographs and gushing commentary on the gala opening which, it seems, was attended by just about everyone on the Tokyo art scene (Besher: "Where did all these people come from?").