Tokyo, part 2
DAY 4
Christmas Eve in Tokyo was actually very low-key. I don't have a whole lot of pictures to show for this day, since I spent half of it sitting down and the other half shopping for toys.
Before I even headed out in the morning, I was woken up around 6AM by my cell phone. When I answered, there were a bunch of my relatives on the other end singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". Mom had them all over for a Christmas dinner, and it was the perfect time to hear from people I haven't seen since I left Canada. Aw. I was barely awake, but I loved it. Ended up chatting to each of them individually for a while, and I didn't even mind the early hour and lack of sleep. I love my relatives.
When I got a few more hours sleep and actually woke up properly, my first stop this day was Harajuku again. During my wanderings the day before, this sign caught my eye.
When you're in Japan, "WE SPEAK ENGLISH!" is always a welcome sight, even if half the time it means "we have one person on staff who still remembers some of the English they learned in high school" (which, to be fair, still means their English is way better than my Japanese). I went in the day before to scope the place out, and the guy that was there at the time actually DID speak excellent English. Yes! I haven't been able to get a decent haircut since I came to Japan, let alone getting my dye touched up, since I've yet to find an English-speaking hairdresser anywhere near where I live. Hell, I'd even be happy to dye my OWN hair if I could find some red hair dye, but at this point I think I have a better chance of finding turkey.
So I ended up going back to the hair place, and ended up there for about three hours. Dye always takes so bloody long to do. Not the most exciting way to spend three hours, but it was a nice little place, and the hair sylists were all fantastic. Plus there was a dog wandering around the store (kind of a store mascot) named Far. Every now and then he'd bring one of his toys over for me to throw for him. I don't have any pictures of him, but he's on the postcard they gave me when I was finished with my haircut and dye.
A few more random shots of Harajuku.
Random fellow gaijin in a Santa suit, wishing people a merry Christmas.
Balloon Frosty.
Since it was a holiday, there were a few cosplayers (or at least, eccentric dressers) hanging around. I didn't get pictures of best ones, sadly. Next time!
No one was taking this guy up on his offer. GEE I WONDER WHY. If you're going to set off the collective "creepy pervert" radar of every chick for a three block radius, I guess you might as well be creative about it.
The gate of the....Meiji Shrine, I think? It was closing just as I got there, so I didn't get any closer.
I suppose I could have tried to hit some touristy places when I left Harajuku, but it was starting to get dark, it was Christmas Eve, and since Japan was probably still out to get me after it failed to thwart my cash-acquiring attempts, I figured most of the places I wanted to see would be closed. So I said "Screw it", hopped on the train, and went back to Nakano for a second go at Nakano Broadway and its apparent treasure trove of cool toys at the Mandrake there.
This time everything was actually OPEN. Awesome. To get to the Mandrake part, you have to walk up the main stretch for a while. Not a lot that interested me, but a few things that made me stop and discreetly snap a picture. Like this guy trying to corral four poodles.
I THINK THEY SELL SOCKS GUYS.
So, Mandrake! Basically, the actual "mall" part of Nakano Broadway is 50% Mandrake outlets. I think they took the same approach as K-Books did in Ikebukuro and split the store up with individual outlets for each section. So there's a store for toys, a store for VINTAGE toys, a store for guy's doujinshi, a store for girl's doujinshi, a store for CDs, a store for video games, a store for cosplay costumes... You get the idea. There's also a ton of toy stores that aren't owned by Mandrake, but everything's so close together that it really doesn't matter much. There were cool toys, there were comics, and I bought them. Among other things, I ended up with a set of Mario keychains, the full set of Twilight Princess figures (still haven't played the game, but cool Zelda toys are cool Zelda toys), a Jabberwocky figurine, a Gloomy Bear plushie, and another pile of Phoenix Wright, Final Fantasy, and Supernatural doujins. Will definitely go back next time I'm in Tokyo.
Along the way, I stopped into a knife/decorative fossil store and bought a brooch for my mother. Not really sure how those two things came together, but if you want a switchblade AND a trilobite necklace, it's the place to go. The lady who owned the store sort of made a brooch out of the fossil I picked out by attaching the pin to the back. While I waited, I snapped a few pictures of the totally kick-ASS toy display she had on one side of the store. In Nakano, even the non-Mandrake and non-toystores love their awesome toys.
GAMERA, YO.
This place made Fairytale of New York my Christmas song for this year. Between all the reggae covers of Christmas songs (reggae music is bizarrely popular here) and hearing that godawful WHAM! song forty million times, it was great to hear a song I actually LIKED.
(Incidentally, if you're a Venture Brothers fan, this year's Holiday Havoc offering is The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend singing Fairytale of New York. Woot!)
By the time the place started to close, I was happy with my toy and comic haul. So I headed back out to the main "street" part of the area, and... I wasn't really sure where to go from there. It was getting late enough that the stores were starting to close. But it was Christmas Eve, I wasn't ready to go back to my hotel, and I was in Tokyo. So I decided to walk around Nakano instead.
Different shot of the same street.
I kept my eye out for a place to eat, but most of the places still open were either hostess bars, ramen shops, or fast food. After a lot of walking through side-streets, I ended up back at the main street. For lack of anywhere else to go, I went to the same restaurant I ate at the first time I came. Everyone seemed to be out on Christmas Eve, so the little restaurant was crowded enough that I had to wait outside for twenty minutes or so before I could get in.
Sat down. Had dinner. Ordered some cake afterwards. Remember hearing that "How Far We've Come" song on the radio overhead at some point. Text-messaged my mom and sabella_a because I was feeling sappy and had the urge to reflect on the fact that I was spending Christmas eve wandering Tokyo alone instead of being back in Canada with my family drinking Kahlua and watching the Muppet Christmas Carol.
By the time I was done at the restaurant it was about 10:30, so there was still half an hour before I'd have to catch the subway back if I didn't want to cut it too close. The timekiller ended up being another round of the Silent Hill arcade game. Which I'm apparently, magically getting good at, because this time I got through more than half the game without dying once. Definitely could have finished it again if I'd had time, but it was 11:00 by the time a swarm of evil slugs and Scrapers finally did me in. Next time, game, next time.
Back on the subway, back to my hotel just in time to get a "Merry Christmas" text message from my mom that made me cry like an idiot.
A few snaps from my hotel room before I turned in for the night. One camera phone shot of my haircut that I sent to my parents...
...and one shot of my new Gloomy Bear plushie, hungry for the blood of my enemies. Or maybe just mine.
DAY 5
Decided to make the last day of the trip my sightseeing day. It turned out that the Yasukuni Shrine was a fifteen minute walk from my hotel, so I went to see what all the fuss was about.
Yasukuni is the shrine for Japanese war dead. It's apparently a gigantic clusterfuck of controversy because (1) a bunch of class A war criminals are enshrined there, (2) politicians like to visit the shrine to rile up Korea and China, and (3) the war history museum on the grounds is, shall we say, a bit revisionist. At least there's some nice sights on the grounds.
The giant torii. The guy walking below it should give you some idea of the scale.
I tried to get a picture of myself with my camera's timer, but this is as close as I could get in ten seconds.
Picture from another angle. Note the troupe of elementary school kiddies on a field trip in their matching yellow hats.
A bunch of them were hanging around another part of the grounds for a while, throwing leaves around (it's still fall in Tokyo for all intents and purposes). There was a little pond with a couple of koi fish in it, and one of the kiddies came up while I was looking at it and started pointing at the fish, looking at me, yelling "Koi! Koi!", and arguing with her friend over whether there were two or three koi in the pond.
Also, I saw a nun. A real live, honest-to-God Catholic nun, crossing the street near the torii. My map told me that the embassy of the Vatican is just down the street.
The main shrine building, and the one that's not open to the public.
See where those four people are standing in front of it? Turns out there was a ceremony going on inside, and you could just barely see some of the Shinto priestesses dancing. There were security guards around that were quick to jump you with a barrage of "NO PICTURES!" if they so much as THOUGHT you were going to take one. Fair enough. It's a religious ceremony, so I can respect that. I stood where those Japanese people are for a while, watching what I could see of the dancing, and stuck around a while longer when the Japanese ones wandered away. Then a few other foreign tourists wandered up, and the security guard was suddenly all "NO ONE ALLOWED! GO AWAY!" and tried to herd us all off. Seeing as he didn't give a damn when those Japanese sightseers were standing in the exact same spot to watch for a bit, it smacks to me of more "OH SHIT GAIJINS!!" mentality at work.
After getting chased away from the shrine, I ended up at the war history museum. Didn't actually go into the main part because I didn't have time, but I checked out the statues outside and the free viewing area on the first floor.
Probably a memorial to people who served on battleships.
And one to women who lost their husbands to war.
The plane on display in the open part of the museum. "Mitsubishi Type 0 Carrier-Based Fighter", according to the sign. I was hoping to see the manned torpedo they have on display (basically the underwater equivalent of a kamikaze plane), but it was in the part of the museum I would have had to pay to get into. Damn.
There was a Japanese garden near the museum, complete with enormous koi.
I eventually wandered back toward the main shrine, and the ceremony had apparently finished. The priests and priestesses were in the courtyard, and there were some Japanese sightseers hanging around to watch and take a few pictures. Since the security guards didn't seem to be jumping on THEM for it, I got my camera and snapped this picture.
I don't know why I like this picture so much, but I do.
There really wasn't much else to see in the area. So I walked to the nearest subway station and headed to Ueno. There's a huge park there with a cluster of museums and a zoo, so I figured there had to be SOMETHING to do there to kill the last few hours before I had to catch my train home. Ha. Yeah, right. I headed up to the Tokyo National Museum, only to see this. DENIED.
Apparently there's a semi-famous graveyard nearby, so I walked around looking for that instead. At least the architecture in the area's a bit nicer than your usual ugly-ass Japanese building.
The mausoleum was closed too, but at least I got a few pictures.
More urban wildlife.
There were a lot of people walking around enjoying the day, but pretty much the only thing open in all of Ueno was the science museum and its robot display. So for lack of anything else to do, I went in.
Most of the display was in Japanese, so I just looked. There was a pretty impressive collection of toy robots from old-school ones to the most recent Gundam toys.
And then, a room full of high-tech, showy, and awesome robotics achievements. This one looked the coolest. No idea what she is, but I think she's part of some kind of stage show.
Take that!
Piano-playing robot? Too bad he wasn't turned on while I was there.
The science museum itself had even less in the way of English signage, so I just walked around a bit looking at the animals. After shrine-visiting earlier in the day, the butterflies kept making me think of Fatal Frame 2.
They also had a giant squid display. Giant squids are FTW in ANY language.
Overall though, pretty disappointing on the museum front. Oh well. I headed back through the park thinking I had plenty of time to get to the station, take the subway back to my hotel, pick up my bags, get to Tokyo station, and catch the train home. As I walked through the park, I heard the freaking PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN theme song playing from somewhere nearby. There was a crowd gathered, so I wandered over to check it out. Turns out it was two Japanese performers doing a show of various juggling and juggling-related tricks. Awesome!
She did a spiffy unicycle act. Here she is about to flip it over with her feet so she can jump on.
He did a diablo act, as well as some amazing yoyo tricks.
I took videos of some of their show. Might Youtube them later, if anyone's interested.
Anyway, I ended up watching their show for way longer than I thought, so I was running a bit behind. Not disastrously so, but I kept ending up at stations with really, really long walks from one subway line to another, so I did some running now and then. Got back to my hotel eventually, grabbed my bags (one I brought with me, but an extra one basically crammed with my bought-and-won stuffed animals), and headed back to Tokyo Station.
I got there with about half an hour to kill before my Shinkansen departed. Since I'd kind of skimped on good meals in Tokyo due to time, I ended up finding a conveyor belt sushi place in the train station and eating random sushi until it was time to catch my train.
I lucked out and had two seats to myself on the train. Bonus! Gloomy Bear wonders if I'll fall asleep this time, and how many passengers he could eat without arousing suspicions.
One last shot of Tokyo from the train window.
The train trip was pretty much the same as the last one. Slept a bit, read a bit, played DS a bit. I didn't have to wait around too long between getting off the Shinkansen and catching the local train home, but I had enough time to snap a picture of the sickly station Christmas tree. Way to put NO EFFORT WHATSOEVER into decorating. I decorated my apartment with a basketful of stuff from the 100-yen Store, and it looked better than this.
Back home at last, exhausted and loaded down with comics and toys. The best way to end a trip.
Most of my doujinshi haul. I left out a few that I'm planning to give as gifts.
I love the Jabberwocky figure.
Since it was Christmas morning in Canada by the time I got home, I called my parents and brother on Skype. We all opened our gifts over the webcam. Not the same as being there, obviously, but the next best thing. I love that technology is so advanced and accessible that I can spend Christmas morning with my family from the other side of the world.