Train time
Last night in Tokyo. I'm heading back up north tomorrow afternoon. I've been kind of down for various reasons during this trip, but I'm feeling mentally and physically better than I was when I arrived. That's something, I guess. Things are bound to get better after some subway-riding, book shopping, and decent food.
Tokyo's never boring, but the Christmas light displays this year were kind of pathetic compared to the last two years. Maybe I wasn't in the right part of town. All I know is that Shinjuku, Harujuku, and Ikebukuro had much more interesting displays last year. Oh well. I still got plenty of pictures of random trees and tree-shaped objects. I finally got to visit the National Museum in Ueno, which is something I've been meaning to do for the last two years but kept delaying (or showing up when it was closed for some reason or other).
The day of Christmas Eve had me wandering aimlessly around a few different parts of the city, with a series of random encounters. A guy approached me in Akihabara trying to raise money for the Japanese suicide prevention program aimed at helping schoolkids. SOMEONE needs to. There's a lot of people standing around on streetcorners this time of year in Tokyo, and it's good to see that some of them are more than the usual folks handing out bar ads and tissue packs. There were kids raising money for UNICEF in Ikebukuro, a few blood drives, and even some folks getting passers-by to make paper cranes to send to the memorial in Hiroshima.
There's also some more...interesting people around. The "Keep Christ in Christmas" crowd always seems to hang around Shinjuku and Shibuya this time of year, holding signs with speakers taped to them that blares a very, VERY loud recorded spiel about Jesus. I also saw one guy with a big hand-made sign he was literally hiding behind, with every square inch of it covered with a lot of rambly conspiracy theory. (Something about government-implanted microchips. Didn't Mythbusters cover that one a few years ago?) And of course, there's always lots of buskers hitting the streets to put on a show, sell some CDs, or just get a bit of spare yen. I saw quite a few jugglers this year, as well as the usual cast of street musicians, from the familiar Shinjuku folks, to a guy playing an electric guitar with a violin bow, to a Japanese guy playing Irish tunes on a fiddle. I stopped to listen to him on Christmas Eve, and it gave me a major homesick moment. Maybe he noticed, because when I bought one of his CDs, he gave me a copy of all three of them of them, and just said "Present for you." in English.
I was still feeling kind of down on Christmas Day, even after talking to my family on Skype for a few hours in the morning. Which I solved by going to Harujuku and getting a haircut at a lovely little salon run by a guy who speaks English and owns two Boston Terriers who have the run of the shop and like jumping up in people's laps. It's hard to feel down after two hours of good conversation, dogs sitting in your lap, and a nice haircut.
The only really "cultural" thing I did (besides the museum) was making a day trip to Kamakura. There's tons of temples around, and more famously, a gigantic Buddha statue. Who's quite photogenic for something that big. Now I just need to see the one in Nara. Next trip, maybe.
Finally, I capped off today by being lazy, going to Ikebukuro, and seeing a movie. I wanted to see Up in 3D at the theatre there, but they were only showing the Japanese-dubbed version in 3D. Since I wanted to see SOMETHING in 3D, I saw Avatar instead. Very pretty movie, even if it's basically Fern Gully with blue cats and the plot's shallower than a plastic kiddie pool in the Sahara.
Anyway, my train leaves late tomorrow afternoon, so I'll be back home tomorrow night some time. Maybe I can finally catch up on emails and things then. And the million OTHER things that I've been meaning to get done.