Day 9: Get around round round.

Well, just like they said, our bags arrived from Kyoto, no big deal. So I open them up, unpacked the Yukata I bought in Kyoto and put mine on. Oh, they are so cumfy for lounging around and doing some casual blogging.

I must have a party where I serve Sake to everyone and I get to where my Yukata.

(I think I will but more of them, but on line from the US where they are probably cheaper and easier to transport)(we are running out of souvenir space).

First full day on our own. We are pretty much spending the day just being people that walk around Tokyo. When we were in our first hotel in Tokyo (oh, ages ago) we were close to a Metro line, so we used the subway. That is good for getting to and from the center of Tokyo. But now we are real close to a JR train line. This line goes around the outskirts of the Metro Area.

So, to start off our cultural adventure, Daniel has selected two unusual museums for us to visit. The first is a classic Japanese Art museum that is near Shibuya. The second is the samurai sword museum, which claims to have over 10,000 swords in their collection.

So, JR Yamanote line Train to the stop after Shibuya. (Future self, please check these station names form me. I am having a beer. And it is really day 10 and my neck hurts). It seems like you can get off at just about any stop on the JR line (except where our hotel is) and find huge buildings and interesting things.

On this one, we walk down the street to find our little museum. But it turns out it doesn't open for another 20 minutes. Cool, we continue on to the main street. On the way we pass a bride in her lovely white western style wedding dress having her picture taken with her handsome groom. Why they were having their picture taken down that funny back alley, I will never know. But on down the streets. We end up in this alley that Daniel says is “Teenager Town” which is a district which specializes in clothes and fun things for teenagers. Lots of uniformed schools kids in safety groups going down the street (narrow street, no cars). Lots of places selling standard teenage clothes gear, but also a number of shops selling anime and manga dress up costumes.

Strange thing here, there were a number of large black men acting as shills out in front of some of these stores. I think they were selling women's clothing. But they were rather intimidating and certainly didn't entice me to step in there. Daniel thinks they were going for the city gangsta image, but they had strong either jamaican or african accents.

This is the location where I started to realize that there was a very definite clothing style to the young ladies who were going for the ultra-sexy, long leg, pseudo school girl/Anime look. It is:

1. Peach and shear.
2. Very short peach shear skirt.
3. Even shorter peach shorts under the dress.
4. Similar setup with the blouse.
5. Some sort of hair lightening going on (redish).
6. Very high heals. (usually cork).
7. No, I wasn't really paying that much attention.

Oh, yeah. The museum that Daniel wanted to see. Instead of the usual collection of ancient and beautiful japanese art prints, they had a special showing of pictures of cats. Ancient Japanese art prints of Cats. But still Cats. We had to take our our shoes to see them. Not sure that Cats merit that sort of special attention. The thing that we discovered about this old art style is that you have to pay attention to different things than you would with western art. With Western art, I think you are drawn to the faces of the people, and perhaps the flowers. With Japanese art, the faces are not so important nor very accurate. And things like the hands and feet seem more representative than real. But the amazing and exact thing was the detail on the Clothing. The patterns and colors and texture and folds on the Komona's we pretty amazing. I wish I could have taken some pictures, but it was verboten. Much of the art shown was also some parody of some other famous work. Probably would have been funnier if I knew the other work. But I am sure it would be something like take a famous the picture of Washington Crossing the Delaware and making everyone be a cat.

Art by D. Powell. Title: Cat Wars. Thanks Dan !!

For Lunch we stumbled into a Nepalese retuarant. We had the best Curry and Nan ever. And we made an important discovery. In Japan, the Chinese restaurants are run by Japanese. The Italian restaurants are run by Japanese. The MacDonalds are run by Japanese. So all of these restaurants are basically bad japanese restaurants. HOWEVER, the Nepali restaurants are run by Nepali guys. They have what I have to think is very genuine Napali food. AND, (from my exhaustive sample size of 2 restaurants), all Nepali people speak fluent english. (The guy we talked to also spoke good Pakistani, Indian, Japanese, and strangely enough, Nepali).

After lunch we too a “short cut” through Yoyogi Park through the Meji Shrine on our way to find the samurai sword museum. Yoyogi park was big and green and had some very old trees. We saw a Japanese Raccoon.

THis little guy was just wondering around the tourists

Emperor Meji is the guy that took power back from the Shogun's and brought Japan into the modern world. He is very well thought of here in Japan. I believe he is the guy that the is depicted in the movie “The last Samurai”, which I now have a uncontrollable urge to watch. And then, perhaps a Tom Cruise marathon.

I am sort of figuring out the whole Shinto Shrine thing. They are all very similar (like catholic churches are similar). You enter through the Tori Gat. Then you have a structure with a spring and water to rinse your hands. The you enter a large fenced in area that has the “sanctuary” which is open on the long side for people to pray. Everything has those big japanese roofs.

 

The Samurai sword museum is down a bunch of little streets and very hard to find. We did find another Nepali restaurant area. Then, just when we thought we were lost. This little merchant comes out of his shop and says, “Are you looking for the Samurai Sword Museum? Wait a second, I have a map for you”. It was only 5 minutes from there.

The main thing I have to say about this museum was that it was free. Actually, it was OK. It just wasn't what we were expecting. First, it was all modern works. And by that, I mean swords that had been made in the ancient style but finished in the last year. There were only about 40 swords (where are the other 9,960 swords at?) and they were displayed as only the metal. We were sort of thinking that we would see the hilts and sheaves and things like that. But no, this museum is really dedicated to the Sword masters and the swords themselves. We did begin to find out the difference between a Katana and a Tachi.

We were tired by now but we were a long way from the train, so we hiked on into Shinjuku. Such big pretty buildings.

 

We stopped for a nice coffee 

This police guy looks cool. But not very scary.

 

I saw a Yamaha household appliances showroom and we walked in. They had the neatest high tech bathrooms and Kitchens. All sorts of things that had been done to make use of small space. Except for the bathroom. These guys take their bathrooms very seriously. The "bath" consists of a hose shower, a cleaning area, and a soaking tub. The entire area is water proof so you can wash up soap up and just rinse the entire room clean. I WANT ONE !!!.

Cool Japanese Bath. The entire room is drainable.
You wash on the side where Dan is and then you soak in the big tub.
This picture is from the "4th Wall" POV

Finally we jumped on the train back to our hotel. Have I told you how the trains and subways work here, as far as payment goes? You put money on a ticket when you enter the station. That ticket gets fed into an auto-gate. It opens the door, lets you through, and gives you the ticket back. When you get to your destination, you feed your ticket into an identical gate on the way out. If you have more money left on the ticket, it gives it back to you. If it is empty, it keeps it. If there is not enough money on the ticket, lights flash, sirens blare, a detention cage drops from the ceiling to surround you, and 5 young women in tight leather outfits appear from underground elavating platforms and proceed to poke you with electric shock wands. Curiously I have been short 10 yen for 3 trips in a row now.

But I digress.

On this trip a rather elagant and classic looking older japanese woman sat down next to me on the train. I immediately was getting body language like I was in here space. Like I was poking her. It was my camera pouch on my belt. She shifted as if I was bothering her so I moved the camera around and said “Go men desai” (excuse me). She said, “Oh, don't worry about it”. Talk about a shocker. A minute later I said to Dan, look there is the red ball building. The elgant woman smiled and me and said, “That is a driving school. It is named “rising sun” and so the red ball”. Then it was our stop. I thanked her for the conversation. What a nice country this is. Or perhaps people are just good.

By the way, We saw this driving school this morning. I forgot to mention it. Here is a picture. And a map link cause this thing is pretty cool. However, the only place I can figure out that you can view this place correctly from is the train. Strange.

Wow, The Laundry Machines in Hotel add their own soap! Everything runs on an exact schedule in Japan, even the laundry machines. And they sound so cool when they spin up and down. It is like starwars clothes cleaning.

Drying doesn't work so well, however. I think you are only supposed to wash like a shirt and underwear and some socks at a time.