Sakura Trip Part Two

After lunch, I made plans with Mondo to come back to Ueno Park later in the evening after he finished work. As I was preparing to leave Ueno Park, I was approached by a local businessman who asked if he could practice speaking English with me. I had heard that this is not uncommon, and since I had some time, I spent about an hour talking with Minoru who works in an office building near Ueno Station. We went to the Starbucks in the station building and talked about cultural differences, politics and other topics. Minoru, thanks again for the tea and conversation! He gave me some suggestions about places to visit and I also had a list that I made of other parks with hanami that I had found on the Net. I had enough time to visit a couple more places I hadn't seen yet, so I checked my map, found the right train, and headed to Asakusa.


Considering how huge the population of Tokyo is, sometimes I'm surprised by how many things are located not that far from each other in the neighborhoods in the central part of the city. I've posted some pictures and information about Asakusa before, but I had never visited the area next to Asakusa along the Sumida River. One of the most famous sights there is the unusual Asahi Building; it features a huge, golden flame on top of a mirror-black structure. Various explanations are given about the design of the building, and apparently some people think it's truly ugly (if you want to know one particularly derisive nickname, click on the link above and read the article). I liked the design, but it definitely creates a large contrast with the surrounding neighborhood. After looking around the area, I walked back across the bright red bridge in the picture. On the opposite side of the river from the Asahi Building is a long park lined with cherry trees along the waterfront. As I walked through this park, it suddenly reminded me of Waterfront Park in downtown Portland; Portlanders, from the picture, do you agree?


Next I headed to Ginza, a district known for upscale shopping with several famous department stores and malls. I wasn't dressed too much like a tourist, so I went into one of the malls to look around a bit. The stores were amazing, as were the prices (as in "amazingly high"). I saw some VERY classy suits by various designers that I wouldn't mind owning, but many of them cost a large percentage of my monthly salary, so I just window shopped . . . I didn't even consider taking any pictures inside the mall, and I couldn't get a good angle for a picture along the street, so no pictures of Ginza--sorry!


Next to Ginza is Hibiya Park, my next destination, but I'll save that for the next post.

NEWS FLASH NUMBER 2: earthquake!

There was a fairly large earthquake off the eastern coast of Japan last night, about 1:00 am local time here. I actually woke up twice from the quake and then from an aftershock. As I was lying in bed wondering how serious it was and if I should get up and go outside, I counted slowly and got up to 35, if I remember right (I was pretty sleepy!)--in any case, it lasted quite a while! So, that's the strongest quake I've felt since I've been in Japan. BUT . . . there was no damage here, as far as I can tell (well, it shook a cannister of chewing gum off my desk, making a large noise that startled me; some of the pieces of gum were chipped, but I guess that can't be considered damage). Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt.

NEWS FLASH

I have found . . . . . REFRIED BEANS!!!! Hurray!!!

I went to the imported food shop in the local mall and found cans of refried beans and frozen tortillas, both at a pretty high price. As you can see in the picture the beans were 396 yen, which is currently $3.77. The store (Kaldi Coffee Farm) is a chain, and I have actually been to one location that was MUCH larger in Tokyo, and they didn't have refried beans there, so I was surprised to see them here. So tomorrow I'm having taco salad, and if the beans are good, I'm going back to the store to get more (and if I buy a lot, maybe they'll keep stocking them).

Sakura (Cherry Blossom) Trip

As many people probably already know, viewing cherry blossoms (hanami) is a big part of Japanese culture in the spring. About a month ago, I took a trip to Tokyo, mostly for that purpose. I went to Ueno Park first, which is one of the most famous places for cherry blossoms in Japan. The trees were a little past their peak blooming, but it was still very beautiful. The park was extremely crowded, which can get annoying, but the cultural experience was definitely worth it. In one of the pictures, you can see blue tarps laid out on the ground; those are spots that are reserved for groups coming later to have a hanami party. I'm told that there are people who are paid just to stay in an area and protect it for the people who will come later in the day; I did see some people who seemed to be doing that. I walked down the main avenue where a large number of the biggest trees are, around the edge of the park, and then through the area that has a large pond with lilies in the summer. Guests that have visited me, you should remember the location of the panorama picture I'm including, but imagine the pond full of lilies, and it might look more familiar-in March there are still just brown stalks. (Paula, remember the spot in the park where you kept saying, "OK, no more pictures. OH! That's beautiful! One more picture. OK, no more pictures! Ooh, that's beautiful -- one more . . . . . ")

I'll continue the trip next time...

Ghibli Museum

In March, Mondo, Aiko and I went to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, a western suburb of Tokyo. Ghibli is a very famous animation studio in Japan that has produced some of Japan's most popular films. I started to become very interested in these films while I was still in the USA, and continue to enjoy them. Animated movies are frequently thought of as something just for children in America (with some exceptions, of course), but that is much less the case in Japan. Even movies that might have children as their primary audience are usually much deeper thematically and artistically than their counterparts in the US. If you haven't seen any of Ghibli Studio's movies before, I highly recommend them (especially Totoro). The museum showcases these movies, and has exhibits that show a short history of animation and the theory behind it through interactive displays. No photography is allowed inside, but I do have some pictures that I took outside the museum. Sorry about the strange shape of the photo of the outside of the museum; I stitched it together from six separate pictures, and the angles ended up a bit strange, but it was the only way I could get the whole building together. The giant robot in the picture with Mondo & Aiko is from a great film called Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

After the museum, another friend, Minoru, joined us. We went to a Mexican restaurant that was having a lunch buffet (hurray! Mexican food!). Later, we looked around the area near Tokyo Dome so I could check out a game store to see if they had any interesting board or card games. They had a reasonably sized assortment, but since many good-quality games currently originate from Germany, and the rules are then translated into Japanese for the market here, there wasn't much that would really be useful for me. (Shortly after that, I found one of my favorite games, "Ticket To Ride", in the local mega-electronics store here in Utsunomiya, but that will be another post . . . )

We took the train to Shinjuku, and we spent much of the evening looking around there. We went to an amazingly large bookstore and walked past Krispy Kreme, which is extremely popular. It's a bit difficult to see in the picture, but the line to get in goes all the way around the front of the restaurant, up the stairs on the side of the building, and over the top of a pedestrian bridge in the background (we did NOT bother to wait for donuts). Our last stop was the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo ( 48 stories) which has a free observation deck near the top.

Thanks for a very fun day, Mondo, Aiko and Minoru!

(P.S. If you didn't already figure this out, all the links connect to information on Wikipedia in case you want to read any more about some of the things I mentioned.)

My second birthday in Japan

Thanks to everybody that sent cards and gifts. I'm including a link to a YouTube video that I made of some of them. The video doesn't include all the Internet cards and greetings I received (it would be kind of hard to video those) but thanks to everybody that sent those greetings also!
Here's the link: Birthday Cards

Mauricio & Kay (part two)

The next day we took a bus tour of central Tokyo (Mauricio and Kay, thanks again for inviting me!) I had never been part of an organized, "touristy" activity in Tokyo before, so it was fun to see things from that perspective (kind of new again) and get some information from a native expert. Our tour guide was great; so you can easily follow them in a crowd, most guides here carry a long pole with a flag on the end, usually something fairly traditional. As you can see in the picture, our guide's "flag" was a small, stuffed Pikachu toy-VERY easy to pick out in a crowd! As she was explaining, she had a good balance of contemporary culture, history and humor.

We visited a couple of the main temples, the gardens at the Imperial Palace, drove by the Japanese Diet Building (Diet as in Congress, not food, although we did have some good food for lunch...), drove through the Akihabara and Ginza districts, and ended up in Odaiba (Tokyo Bay) before returning to the hotel. Odaiba is the man-made island in Tokyo Bay that has a large entertainment and cultural district. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember pictures of Japan's Statue of Liberty that I took last year. Here's the same location with Mauricio, and also a view of the statue from the boat tour we took. The whole tour (on the bus and on the ship) lasted most of the morning and afternoon, and I was surprised at how much we were able to see in that short time.

Mauricio and Kay, I'm very glad you guys were able to visit and that we could spend some time together. Come back and visit again any time!