(no subject)
So weather.com informed me Saturday would nice and sunny - great for the cherry blossom viewing. So off to Ueno park (supposedly one of the best sites). Although - in retrospect "sunny" was a tad optimistic:
Ah, Ueno park, the quiet, the serenity, the half million f#cking people:
I actually had to wait in a long line just to get out of the train station - a first. Then outside of the park was totally mobbed. You then proceed to join the current, moving at a foot a minute - no control over the mob's course - with literally millimeters of personal space. Ah the peace - ah the calm. I'm laying the sarcasm on a little thick, but the popularity of it made it a self defeating exercise. It was like general admission at a concert - it was ridiculous. Apparently everyone else in Asia had the same idea and saw the same (wrong) weather report. The mental image is of picnicing under the trees. Which you could actually do. There was a designated area on either side with industrial blue tarps covering the ground sectored off into little squares with police tape and traffic cones. Bucolic. Apparently the way people, usually companies, get one of these is getting a junior employee to quarter off and guard the space for a week in advance. Off course with our mob walking by they only really got to see the tree squarely above them. The mob takes you through ONE nice canopied area - and it was nice, don't get me wrong - but that was it save the scattered odd tree. Maybe I'll go see the shrine:
.....or maybe not. So I was in Ueno - might as well enjoy it. Sushi here, for some reason, is like 15-20% better than it is in Shibuya and Harajuku - so indulged in some of that. I've never seen shrimp this orange btw:
Note also, a nearby store had......chibi.....Saw....toys.....
What is with Japan and inappropriate merchandising? Ironic Fight club and Saw toys? Soft-core pornographic action figures? I could go on...
After that I opted to head for Ginza (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginza). This is for no other reason than its the only major Tokyo district I have yet to experience. Its known for luxury shopping, pretentious housewares, top designer clothing (super-models only please), and exotic restaurants that charge who-in-their-right-mind prices. I could feel my wallet curl in pain (don't worry I couldn't/wouldn't/didn't buy a damn thing). Its renown in TOKYO for being unreasonably expensive, so by world-wide standards....... This is truly the land of 14$ coffee. I had to lay low - make sure not to be discovered.
Anyway - one thing I did find was the main Nissan building.
Yeah - I know you guys showed interest in the New GT-R (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_GT-R) - well this was GT central. Behold the JTCC racer: (note also last picture in wikipedia article)
Along with the little two car showroom they had a little information area (That looked like the work of Stanley Kubrick):
And naturally the road car.
Which you can sit in. Fairly big and comfy, although the back is better suited to dismembered torsos. Very cool computer - the whole thing is (surprise surprise) shamelessly boy-racer aggressive.
Then from there to the central Sony store:
Apparently that front panel does......stuff. But I watched for a good while and nothing happened. Inside the whole building is laid out like a spiral stair case - each giant step being a whole showroom for one particular gadget. Notable items include the 'Rolly' - which in an unnecessarily complex fashion, takes the 1gig of music you can load and plays it out of its tiny little speakers while lights flash and it rolls around and flaps its panels in a 'dancing' motion.
Wow, all those technologies together at last. My life is so much simpler now. To their credit though they've managed to make a new ridiculously thin flat screen. I'm talking stick of gum thin. Then I perused the 5k$ cameras and was on my way. But every piece of electronics (even ones a couple years old they sell in the states) is twice as expensive here.
Ah, Ueno park, the quiet, the serenity, the half million f#cking people:
I actually had to wait in a long line just to get out of the train station - a first. Then outside of the park was totally mobbed. You then proceed to join the current, moving at a foot a minute - no control over the mob's course - with literally millimeters of personal space. Ah the peace - ah the calm. I'm laying the sarcasm on a little thick, but the popularity of it made it a self defeating exercise. It was like general admission at a concert - it was ridiculous. Apparently everyone else in Asia had the same idea and saw the same (wrong) weather report. The mental image is of picnicing under the trees. Which you could actually do. There was a designated area on either side with industrial blue tarps covering the ground sectored off into little squares with police tape and traffic cones. Bucolic. Apparently the way people, usually companies, get one of these is getting a junior employee to quarter off and guard the space for a week in advance. Off course with our mob walking by they only really got to see the tree squarely above them. The mob takes you through ONE nice canopied area - and it was nice, don't get me wrong - but that was it save the scattered odd tree. Maybe I'll go see the shrine:
.....or maybe not. So I was in Ueno - might as well enjoy it. Sushi here, for some reason, is like 15-20% better than it is in Shibuya and Harajuku - so indulged in some of that. I've never seen shrimp this orange btw:
Note also, a nearby store had......chibi.....Saw....toys.....
What is with Japan and inappropriate merchandising? Ironic Fight club and Saw toys? Soft-core pornographic action figures? I could go on...
After that I opted to head for Ginza (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginza). This is for no other reason than its the only major Tokyo district I have yet to experience. Its known for luxury shopping, pretentious housewares, top designer clothing (super-models only please), and exotic restaurants that charge who-in-their-right-mind prices. I could feel my wallet curl in pain (don't worry I couldn't/wouldn't/didn't buy a damn thing). Its renown in TOKYO for being unreasonably expensive, so by world-wide standards....... This is truly the land of 14$ coffee. I had to lay low - make sure not to be discovered.
Anyway - one thing I did find was the main Nissan building.
Yeah - I know you guys showed interest in the New GT-R (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_GT-R) - well this was GT central. Behold the JTCC racer: (note also last picture in wikipedia article)
Along with the little two car showroom they had a little information area (That looked like the work of Stanley Kubrick):
And naturally the road car.
Which you can sit in. Fairly big and comfy, although the back is better suited to dismembered torsos. Very cool computer - the whole thing is (surprise surprise) shamelessly boy-racer aggressive.
Then from there to the central Sony store:
Apparently that front panel does......stuff. But I watched for a good while and nothing happened. Inside the whole building is laid out like a spiral stair case - each giant step being a whole showroom for one particular gadget. Notable items include the 'Rolly' - which in an unnecessarily complex fashion, takes the 1gig of music you can load and plays it out of its tiny little speakers while lights flash and it rolls around and flaps its panels in a 'dancing' motion.
Wow, all those technologies together at last. My life is so much simpler now. To their credit though they've managed to make a new ridiculously thin flat screen. I'm talking stick of gum thin. Then I perused the 5k$ cameras and was on my way. But every piece of electronics (even ones a couple years old they sell in the states) is twice as expensive here.