Friday night & Saturday
Friday in Tokyo
Got into Tokyo right around rush hour, and the only real map I had was totally in English, but the taxi driver we had spoke enough English. Not as posh as the Brighton back in Kyoto, but as Lorraine said, "space is at a premium here." We are on a main street. So we unpacked, and headed out for dinner and shopping/tralling. Lorraine's stomach was upset, so rather than subjecting it to foreign flavors, we found an italian eatery real quick. Lorraine got parmesan risotto (they made it in front of us in this freaking huge wheel of parmesan) and I got fettucini carbonara. Just walked around and shopped.
-------------------
Saturday in Tokyo
More expensive breakfasts at our hotel, so we crossed the street to a Denny's! Yay eggs and corned beef hash and salad and toast.
Decided we wanted to go up north to the Ueno Park area. Thankfully the weather cleared wonderfully, and it was sunny and fantastic for strolling. A lot of people about, but it was nice. There was a shrine in the big lake there, which we checked out, and then we headed to the Tokyo National Museum, which is supposed to have some 80,000 artifacts, only a portion of which could ever be displayed at any one time. First we checked out the Asian Gallery building, which I fell in love with. I had taken Asian Art back in college, and this building was full of Chinese, Korean, Indian, Iranian, Egyptian, Turkish, TONS of different stuff, a lot of which I'd studied, and I was going crazy with fascination. Took tons of pictures, to the point where I had to delete older trip pics off my memory card. The main gallery, oddly enough, didn't hold too much interest for me. I don't know why, but ancient Japanese stuff isn't all that impressive to me. It either looks like it was made by someone who didn't know what he was doing, or it looks like a bad imitation of something Chinese. The ningyo dolls, courtesan robes and theater garb did interest me, though. Love seeing how women had to wear like, 6 or 10 layers of kimono, cool yet blarg.
Caught a late lunch at the Ueno Hard Rock Cafe-- nice big cobb salad. After that, we headed to Akihabara and the supposed "Den Den Town area". Now, okay, we knew Akihabara was the kinda.. computer and electronic goods area, but oh my god. My brain just about exploded-- let me explain. With these popular shopping areas, there's always lots of lights and neon signs and large tv screens for advertising. But there's a subtle cohesion to it all. The sounds you hear are the natural sounds of people walking about shopping. Akihabara throws that cohesion to the ground, stomps on it, and starts flashing lights and shouting through a loud speaker, calling forth its minions of nerdly boys searching for that gadget or video game that must be bought before returning to their lonely bedrooms. A lot of the side streets were places that the cars wouldn't go, so it was like the shopping arcades, with people walking everywhere. The stores' shelves were all spaced too close together, and everyone trying to fight each other to find what they're looking for... YARG. Lorraine was on a mission to find an old Playstation 1 game her father was interested in, so we went from store to store asking if they had any PS1 games in stock, and a couple did but not the one we wanted. I pleeeaded for us to leave, and we escaped the insanity and came back to the hotel. Oh, we stopped at the local convenient store for snacks (we'd found another Mister Donut out in Akihabara) and then watched "Mansfield Park" on my lappie.
Got into Tokyo right around rush hour, and the only real map I had was totally in English, but the taxi driver we had spoke enough English. Not as posh as the Brighton back in Kyoto, but as Lorraine said, "space is at a premium here." We are on a main street. So we unpacked, and headed out for dinner and shopping/tralling. Lorraine's stomach was upset, so rather than subjecting it to foreign flavors, we found an italian eatery real quick. Lorraine got parmesan risotto (they made it in front of us in this freaking huge wheel of parmesan) and I got fettucini carbonara. Just walked around and shopped.
-------------------
Saturday in Tokyo
More expensive breakfasts at our hotel, so we crossed the street to a Denny's! Yay eggs and corned beef hash and salad and toast.
Decided we wanted to go up north to the Ueno Park area. Thankfully the weather cleared wonderfully, and it was sunny and fantastic for strolling. A lot of people about, but it was nice. There was a shrine in the big lake there, which we checked out, and then we headed to the Tokyo National Museum, which is supposed to have some 80,000 artifacts, only a portion of which could ever be displayed at any one time. First we checked out the Asian Gallery building, which I fell in love with. I had taken Asian Art back in college, and this building was full of Chinese, Korean, Indian, Iranian, Egyptian, Turkish, TONS of different stuff, a lot of which I'd studied, and I was going crazy with fascination. Took tons of pictures, to the point where I had to delete older trip pics off my memory card. The main gallery, oddly enough, didn't hold too much interest for me. I don't know why, but ancient Japanese stuff isn't all that impressive to me. It either looks like it was made by someone who didn't know what he was doing, or it looks like a bad imitation of something Chinese. The ningyo dolls, courtesan robes and theater garb did interest me, though. Love seeing how women had to wear like, 6 or 10 layers of kimono, cool yet blarg.
Caught a late lunch at the Ueno Hard Rock Cafe-- nice big cobb salad. After that, we headed to Akihabara and the supposed "Den Den Town area". Now, okay, we knew Akihabara was the kinda.. computer and electronic goods area, but oh my god. My brain just about exploded-- let me explain. With these popular shopping areas, there's always lots of lights and neon signs and large tv screens for advertising. But there's a subtle cohesion to it all. The sounds you hear are the natural sounds of people walking about shopping. Akihabara throws that cohesion to the ground, stomps on it, and starts flashing lights and shouting through a loud speaker, calling forth its minions of nerdly boys searching for that gadget or video game that must be bought before returning to their lonely bedrooms. A lot of the side streets were places that the cars wouldn't go, so it was like the shopping arcades, with people walking everywhere. The stores' shelves were all spaced too close together, and everyone trying to fight each other to find what they're looking for... YARG. Lorraine was on a mission to find an old Playstation 1 game her father was interested in, so we went from store to store asking if they had any PS1 games in stock, and a couple did but not the one we wanted. I pleeeaded for us to leave, and we escaped the insanity and came back to the hotel. Oh, we stopped at the local convenient store for snacks (we'd found another Mister Donut out in Akihabara) and then watched "Mansfield Park" on my lappie.