Back in Tokyo

The first two days back in Tokyo I did a bit of sight seeing. Before heading to the Ryokan I went around the Imperial Palace grounds again, very beautiful but not much to do since the "good stuff" is completely off limits to basically everyone. I wanted to take some pictures of the actual Tokyo station too, it's done up in a very nice style, but they're currently renovating it and repairing it to return it to it's former glory from the turn of the 20th century. So just a bunch of construction stuff sadly.

The next day, Saturday, I met up with Tomoko-San, the girl I met in Nara. She lives here so was willing to show me around for the day. She toured me around Senso-ji, a very large Shrine here in Tokyo. Or Temple, can't remember which is which (one means Shinto religion, the other Buddhist) This was built to protect Tokyo on the east, Other major cities also have "protection" type Shrines. Like others, there is a lot of little shops inside along the main street. Some are very touristy, but others carry very authentic goods. She stopped in one and bought some new.. sandals (can't remember the proper name) that are used while wearing a Kimono, something she learned last year how to wear. Very intricate, and different styles for different seasons / event types. Even did a small little game where you use a bow and arrow to try and hit a target... I didn't do too bad got close, but didn't win much of a prize, just 10% off some amusement park somewhere.

Spent quite a bit of time there, then headed to a restaurant for lunch. Interesting place specializing in essentially small eels cooked. Very traditional, sitting on tatami mats, not the type of place I'd go without a local. It also has a unique system for payment. When you enter you trade your shoes for a wooden block with a number on it (written in Kanji) You use this to sit down / order your food. Once you pay you give them the wooden block, then they take the money and give you a different block. You can then use this to get your shoes back. They put this in place about 40 years ago to stop "dine and dash" scenarios. Hard to run away without your shoes!

Our plan then was to head to Meiji Jingu Shrine, a large park / shrine area near Harajuku in Tokyo dedicated to the Emperor and his consort during the Meiji era. However by the time we got there it was close to 5pm and was already closing down (most touristy stuff seems to close at 5pm sadly). So instead she took me nearby to Harajuku, THE place to go shopping in Toko. I wanted to buy some "Tokyo" fashions considering it's reputation. There's a lot of small and large shops... world renowned places such as Armani and Prada to small Japanese only labels and everything in between. I bought a few shirts and some Japanese denim jeans, very expensive $400 for the pair but they were 70% off, whew! Very trendy little area Harajuku... interesting seeing a small store selling punk/goth type jewelry, and the young guys running it sitting on tatami mats in a traditional style.

After that went to a Brazilian joint for dinner... her friend is dating a guy from Brazil, apparently the two countries are pretty close, it's quite easy to move from Brazil to Japan, unlike every other country in the world and Japan. This Brazilian guy even met the Emperor once, neat side story I thought.

Anyways had some pretty good food and we just had a good time chatting, everything from WW2 from Japan's perspective to world history and how Americans do at Japanese movies (badly as it turns out, apparently Memoirs of a Geisha's dancing scenes were closer to a circus in her mind then the real thing) After that it was pretty late so said our goodbyes and I got ready for today, which was the Tokyo Game Show... which was crazy busy, but good. However I'll probably save that for my next entry. Tomorrow is probably Mt Fuji although my leg feels like it was hit with a baseball bat, then back to Nagoya for a night, then 2 more nights here then... Home!

---

---