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Published: August 18th 2017
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Masago 5-chome
This is our block of flats. If you can zoom in, you might see our new blue towels drying on the balcony just to the left of the top of the tree at this end. Today was a good day. We hadn't put any thought into it last night, but today when I got up, Stephen suggested having an easy morning, and then heading into Akihabara (the electronics area of Tokyo) in the afternoon and staying into the evening. This was a brilliant idea. Shibuya is the only part of Tokyo we've seen by night so far, and I'd got as far as thinking what a shame it was such hard work to stay anywhere long enough to see the night lights, but it never occurred to me that
we could go later! What an inspiration! Stephen suggested a neighbourhood walk in the morning, at which I wondered about going to a villa nearby-ish that I had seen online. It seemed to be just a couple of hundred metres further than the lovely old Japanese-style house we walked home from last week, so it should be doable, we figured. All we needed was a short nap to get ready for it.
So we had our nice easy morning, and re-woke at 11, and left soon after. Not only was today not raining, but it was even sunny for long periods, so it was a pleasant
walk. One thing that surprised - nay, shocked - us, even on the bus from the airport, was that although there is a lot of green around (lawns in front of apartment blocks, lots of parks, albeit often small ones, and even little allotment-like areas) it is often unkempt. There are weeds growing through cracks in the asphalt on the footpaths, and the park gardens and apartment lawns are brimming with weeds. Two days this week, the park across the road did have workers mowing the lawns and trimming some edges, but clearly there are not enough workers to get round everywhere often enough, and I guess too that many of the public green spaces are nobody's specific responsibility, so nothing gets done. Very unJapanese.
Anyway, we had a pleasant walk mostly through some of the aforementioned public green spaces, for about 2 km I suppose. We found the house, called the "Old Villa of Denbee Kamiya" who was a brewer who had a big success with a particular drink around the turn of the (19th ->20th) century. There was no English at all here, and I had no prior knowledge to call on, so we just looked at
the rooms and the pictures without understanding anything. But it was very attractive, with rooms in both Western and Japanese styles. I assume the man was also a patron of the arts, because there is now a gallery right next to the house, built in a similar style, and this week it was displaying works by children of some local Middle Schools, as well as three professional artists' exhibitions upstairs.
We found a restaurant for lunch (still not what you'd call close to home - it's astounding to me how far you have to go to eat out in this locality) and walked back. It nearly rained, but Stephen got out the umbrella, so that warded it off. Then, after all that food and activity, it was time for a rest. We had thought to leave home at 4 to go to Akihabara, but something on the way home caught our attention, and we hung around watching and videoing that. Have you ever seen people unscaffolding a building? This was fascinating. A man at the top knocked off one piece at a time, then passed it to a man on the scaffolding a level below, who passed it to
Denbee Kamiya's Villa
The scrolls on the wall are part of the photography exhibition on at the gallery next door. Beautiful work by Damon Bay. the man waiting a floor below him, and so on. The building they were on was 8 - 10 storeys high, I guess, and it was hypnotic to watch the scaffolding disappear so quickly. A really efficient method, and oddly satisfying. So anyway, watching that meant we were later home than 2pm, so we allowed ourselves to sleep later than 4 if we wanted to.
As it turned out, we didn't need to, so we were out the door by 4.15. I had the thought that we probably didn't want to be in Tokyo Station at 5 o'clock if we could avoid it, so any minutes saved before then would be good. As it turned out, 5 o'clock is not a problem in Tokyo, even on the Yamanote Line, the central one that runs around the main central city stations. The station wasn't a lot more crowded than any other time we've been there, and we even got seats together for the two stops we had to travel. The timetable at K Station shows the greatest number of trains (9 or 10) running in the hour between 7 and 8 pm. The 5-6 pm period is the same as
Dusk, Akihabara
I love that Akihabara means "Field of Autumn Leaves." A place with a less apt name would be hard to find. the rest of the afternoon - about 6 - 7 trains running in the hour.
So we got off at Akihabara, and oh, joy, it was just as we remembered it: bright lights flashing shop names and advertisements, people with mikes touting their shops' promos and specials, electronic bits and pieces lining the footpaths - it was wonderful. And being 5 o'clock, there were plenty of locals hurrying past, adding to the busy atmosphere. It was dusk, and just dark enough to make the lights exciting. We were there to see if it was worth Stephen buying some video editing software: it's hard to get genuine software in Vietnam, some companies won't allow downloads when they detect that you're in Vietnam, and when a purchase calls for a shipping address, we worry that whatever they want to send won't make it through the post. So what would happen if we bought some software here and used it in Vietnam? The first shop we went into had an extremely helpful salesman. We explained the problem, he thought about it and gave a couple of suggestions, he phoned one of the software companies and tried to get their English speaker to
talk to us (that didn't happen, but he tried) and finally got us some really useful and authoritative answers from people who should know. We must have been there 30 or 40 minutes, and we came away with a free CD-ROM. (Actually, I bought a mouse pad too.) We had thought we might go to another shop for a second opinion but by the end it seemed unnecessary. This guy was really thorough, and really good. Unfortunately, the answer was that we would couldn't do anything with Japanese-bought software, we'd have to try again in VN.
But that left us with the evening free to wander. We took some back streets, which were a mixture of little eating places and little electronics shops, and in the end I did all the buying: some toys for teaching, a few gifts, a gizmo or two. For dinner, we thought we'd go western (not Italian if possible) and we found a Denny's. But this was not the Denny's menu we expected - it was
Japanese Denny's. Lots of "hamburg steaks" (mince patties) with variations and combinations of cheese and sauce on top. Stephen had a patty on rice with curry and melted
cheese, and mine was a patty with a 7-cheese white sauce. Actually pretty good.
Time for home, and we missed the 9 o'clock rush too. We were just in time for a fast train back, and we were back in the flat a little after 10. Not too tired, even though we saw the night lights, and not too footsore, although Stephen has a blister on his big toe. Notwithstanding, today was a Good Day.
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