In which I prove I am my mother's child and disprove a stereotype

After a rather aimless day yesterday (I met with Dr. Hwang, and then Jennie was supposed to meet me in Shinjuku but at the last minute had to work some more so all I did was buy bread and see the view of Tokyo from 45 stories up) I thought it'd be nice to actually see something today. I started off by looking around my neighborhood, Asakusa. There's a temple here that's famous for it's enormous paper lantern. It was, in fact, as enormous as reported. It's enormosity made an enormous impression on me, you might say. But it's probably better if you don't. It just sounds silly.


Surrounding the temple is a large number (but not enormous - we're done with that gag now) of small schlock stores. These alternated with shoe stores (at least 20% of all the stores in teh area were selling shoes - it was kinda wierd), kimono shops, and shops that sold the fabric for kimonos. I bought quite a bit of fabric, proving that Mom had a bit more influence on me than is necessarily good for my pocketbook.


All this wandering around had basically gotten me lost. But that was ok. Exactly at the point where I decided to start worrying and trying to find my way back, I got to another metro station. It was time to go to Shinjuku, anyway.


Indending to make a brief stop at my transfer point, Ueno, I got out to go see the park adjecent to the JR station. While wandering around the shady walkways, I pulled out my trusty new guide book (plus one point to me for swallowing my pride and buying the stupid thing - it's already been fantastically useful) and looked at all the things you can do in Ueno Park. The book said that the National Museum was worth a full day's exploration, so I decided to save that for when I had more than three hours. Plus, there was a temple (or shrine, I forgot) that was open until 6, so I thought a short trip into the National Science Museum would be nice.

I walked inside the gates and was accosted by a guy in incomprehensible Japanese. Something about one or two exibits. Quickly using my Batman-like powers of observation, I saw large pictures of penguins and thought "There must be a special penguin exhibit. I like penguins." (I had obviously changed out of Batman mode, since penguins are not my archenemy.) So I said I wanted to see two. This sent me down to buy a special penguiny ticket, with a special penguiny price of 1300 yen.

The penguin exhibit turned out to be about nankyoku, or Antarctica. Penguins were involved, but they were not live. Also, lots of crazy kanjis were involved so I got to look at stuff and get super confused. I did get to see a lot of cool stuff like a propellar from one of the Japanese expeditions, a model of their current outpost, and lots of micrographs of asteroids where you can see the different grains that recrystallized (possibly during entry into the Earth's atomosphere? I just guessing here because I certainly don't know the Japanese words for crystal structure or anneal.)

I'd had about enough befuddled staring by now, so I headed out. I spotted a sign that said 'rocket launcher' so I went to go check it out. It was super big, so when I came around the corner and first saw it, I said "Oh wow!" to which the Japanese dad next to me replies "You come from America?"

Contrary to all warnings I've heard about Tokyo people's rudeness, this quick exchange led to him and his family going aroudn the entire museum with me and then taking me to rotating sushi. It was excellent Japanese practice for me, since his English was very poor, despite being able to speak nearly fluently about Begas (Las Vegas) and the Grand Canyon. Akagi-san, you rock.

Inspired by Lost in Translation (again courtesy of the guide book) I went to the Shibuya Starbucks to watch people at Hachiko, the busiest intersection in Tokyo. This is what it looked like every three minutes:

(by the way, I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. This is likely to continue until either a) I get real inspiration or b) I get home and can upload the pictures from my camera.)

Tomorrow's either going to be the National Museum and Ueno Park part 2, or Roppongi Hills and Kabuki (if they're performing at all tomorrow.) Sunday's already pretty planned out. Go to Harajuku to watch all the crazy cosplay costumes, head back to Asakusa for the festival (maybe - this depends on what time said festival actually takes place), and then meet Sachiko-san for a delicious tofu dinner and beer and conversation. Then Nikko on Monday, the alternate plan from tomorrow for Tuesday, and that's it.

My, how Tokyo time flies.