Mokuyoubi

12-27-07

long day again. made a dilligent effort to get up at 9 am with the alarm, rolled over and slept till quarter to ten, got up and fiddled with a panel on the wall which controls the hot water and is missing an "on" button, got it to work, showered in the ridiculously dinky bathroom, went out and bought breakfast from a local bakery. this place used to be a town separate from tokyo a few decades ago, and it still feels like it.

got on a train and worked out the connections to get to asakusa to meet three taiwanese girls from school and a friend of one of theirs from their school in taiwan. while chris and i waited for them to get into asakusa from their hotel, i wandered along the sumida rifer and finally saw the golden poo sculpture. it's a big, bulbous, lopsided tadpole thing on top of the asahi beer building.

met up with the taiwanese girls at kaminari-mon, which means "thunder gate", a massive torii which opend onto a long, narrow, garish touristy strip of souvenir shops and food stalls until it bonked into sensoji temple, a giant thing with a huge incense urn in front a five tiered pagoda next to it, and people tossing offerings into a big metal box. the whole area was crammed with folks - saw alot of gaijin and even ran into a couple of m'ladies and three korean guys from school bumming around together. ate at a kind of bland japanese/italian family restaurant place, then one of the girls had to catch the shinkansen to kyoto with her friend, and the other two went somewhere else, so chris and i went to shibuya for a while to wander around.

went to shibuya crossing, i think it's called, a five or six way intersection where, honest to goodness, about a thousand people swarm across the huge square and push past eachother to get across the street while two story tall video screens blare somethingorother about a j-pop idol's new single. walked down a few streets to look at the flashing lights and whatnot, but didn't go to far. should probably go back to se yoyogi park and meiji shrine in that general area.

went to shinjuku next, since it was on the way home, and came out of the enormous shinjuku station into the kabuki-cho area, a place i imagined was much scuzzier than it is because all the stories i've read that take place there involve prostitutes, yakuza, and murderers. it didn't seem so different from parts of shibuya, ginza, or a lot of the other areas of tokyo i've seen, maybe just a higher concentration of nightclubs and buskers out in front of them.

went to some other parts of shinjuku overlooking the train station, and then headed back to one of the entrances where several bands were setting up to take turns playing. one of them was called "the you know may" or something like that and played shredding funk stuff. the drummer had a toy kit. there was also a decent jazz band called "meine meinung". we started talking to a couple gaijin standing next to us who are living just north of tokyo and learning a little japanese before they start an english teaching program next year. one of them was from waseca, mn.

came back to the neighborhood, ate at a cheap chinese chain place down the street, and then i took a walk through the area alone. turns out we're on the outskirts of most of the stuff of interest in the area. the rest is just semi-suburban boulevards that kind of reminded me of st. louis park. i did happen to see a combination cafe/dog grooming operation, though, and a few interesting looking side streets i'll go down when i can see them better.

tomorrow, no clue what to do - back out to shibuya? ueno? we'll go to the fish market soon, really damned early. past my bedtime right now.