Robot Claw

Before I start today – no comments??! Is anyone reading this?

Yesterday started with an as-soon-as-it-opened visit to the Tokyo Institute Of Nature study in Ebisu. A fancy name for an untended park (think Blackbutt), which is one of the very few of it’s type in Tokyo. Nice enough, I suppose, but no doubt much more appreciated by a Tokyoite that rarely gets to spend much time in nature.

Afterwards we headed over to Harajuku and the Meiji Shrine. We have been here before, but the shrine is so close to Harajuku (itself so close to Shibuya) that it seems silly to get off the train there and not visit. As it turns out it was a good thing we did, since we got to see two separate traditional shinto weddings in progress:

The meiji shrine is a monument dedicated to the eternal souls of a departed Japanese emperor and his wife. It’s beautiful, serene and very popular with tourists (both Japanese and foreign). One of it’s big attractions is writing a wish/prayer on a wooden postcard and placing them around a sacred tree. Eventually they are collected and burned in the hope the prayers will come true. Here are some examples of the thousands hanging there yesterday:

Of course we had to make our own, or at least I did. I caved again to disbelief in superstition, and instead embraced absurdity.

Harajuku and neighbouring Shibuya are the two most popular destinations for trendy Japanese teens to go shopping in. And when I say popular I mean really popular, as ininsanely popular 🙂

< Harajuku, Shibuya

We were getting tired by now (it was mid afternoon) and headed back to the ryokan for a couple of hours rest. As we were riding the train back the heavens opened and a truly monsoonal rain fell. By the time we’d got back to the ryokan, we were drenched (even with umbrellas!)

< !!!

After a rest, we headed back out (the rain had stopped) on a lazy walk toward downtown Ueno (about 30 minutes). In Ueno park we were quite surprised to find a flowering bonsai tree competition, or at least the end of one (it was being packed away). There were about a hundred of the bonsai originally in display, and happily quite a few grand ones had still not been picked up by their owners .

Are they azaelas? Maybe AS or JAF could identify. By the way the hydrangeas are blooming all over the city right now, and KLS always stops to have a gander!

The more I visit Ueno, the more I like it. The ameyokocho shopping street is a crazy mix of pachinko parlour, restaurant, adult establishment and game center and really comes alive at night.

The third shot above is of a Pachinko parlour. Can you see the gigantic Evangelion poster on the side? Evidence of the marketing towards younger players the parlours have (successfully, apparently) undertaken in recent years. Every licensed property you can imagine – from Harry Potter to Thunderbirds – has been used in Pachinko!

Here’s some shots of some very, very, very expensive fruit (think 100 yen = 1 US dollar approximately).

Would YOU pay over $100 for a rockmelon/cantaloupe? I think not! (These are in the special fruit gift shop in the basement of a department store and are popular gifts to give when you really need to impress someone)

And the obligatory arcade shots of the day, including the ‘dating game’ House Of The Dead EX (left), the Arc-Systems fighting game BlazBlue (center) and the (awesome) fighter Tatsunoko vs Capcom (right).

To quote Doctor Who quoting someone else (yes I know), in Tokyo, there are “more games to see than can ever be seen and more games to play than can ever be played”!

I did see a cute bunny cake though!

And KLS purchased a tiger washcloth, and also some coffee that came packed with a cute girl ‘bottle topper’:

Yesterday’s food choices for breakfast (Wendy’s) and lunch (Subway) were bland, and chosen simply because they happened to be nearby when we got hungry. Dinner though, well that was another story…

< Delicious!

I’m writing these in the mornings, as you may have guessed. Which means I already know the plans of the day after the day you’ve just read about. So what will you read about tomorrow…?

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 at 6:26 pm and is filed under Family, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.