Day 2 in Tokyo

Day 2 in Tokyo:

Today started out horribly. I woke up several times during the morning burning up because my room got super-uncomfortably warm. However I persevered and tried to ignore the heat and am thankful I didn’t die of heat stroke.

So I got up this morning, bought an onigiri (rice and treat wrapped in seaweed, mine was chicken—mmm) at the corner Seven-Eleven and hopped on the subway to Ueno park. Today I believe is supposed to be the warmest/one of the warmest days I’m here, so decided to try and make it more indoorsy. I picked Ueno because it is where most of Tokyo’s good museums are concentrated. It’s a lot like the Mall in DC—a big park with museums (and the zoo as well as a few shrines) scattered around the perimeter. I went to a few shrines first in the morning, which was lovely, and at about noon headed over to the Tokyo National Museum. This is a museum with about four or five buildings, and I went first to the main building, which houses the Japanese art. I emerged from that one building over two hours later, very pleased. I saw some neat ceramics, some beautiful Buddhist statues, thought I saw Dean Kirby, calligraphy, screens, Samurai swords and armor, a toilet which offered to wash and dry my tushie, Kabuki costumes, a famous essay (written partially in Classical Chinese! Woot!) and laquerware, plus some other things which slip my mind. One of my favorites was the Buddhist sculptures which has crystal inlay over lacquer on their lips and eyes—that meant that the eyes looked glassy (there was this one that stared right at me, I’ll be having nightmares about that one) and lips looked like they had a touch of gloss on them. I thought that was really neat. There were good English explanations of a lot of the things (except for the toilet. Hmm…) and I had a really good time there.

The other building I went to was built exclusively for this treasure collection which I failed to appreciate properly. I think it held more significance for the locals. However I did appreciate the really great modern architecture of that building.

I ended up not going to any other museums in the area because they didn’t look as good and I don’t quite have unlimited time. However their western art museum was designed by Le Corbusier, which I appreciated. Tokyo has some really neat architecture, I have to say.
After that I walked over to this street where the center of the black market used to be located, but now it is much more like a little shopping street full of small items and shoes. I bought a hat to shade myself from the last rays of the afternoon sun. And I’ll wear it tomorrow. I think wearing a hat will be easier than dealing with an umbrella, which I did today but found very inconvenient.

From the old black market street I walked over to the street where all the commercial restaurant vendors are. It was AMAZING!! It was like a kilometer of Northwestern Cutlery in Japanese. Japan is the master of the specialty shop. Some of these places sold only knives (those were my favorite—row upon row of gorgeous knives, some from great names like Wusthof and others local Japanese names—but all good quality, full tang, sharp blades, etc. One sold only lacquered wooden dishes, others only sold server and chefs clothing, some were more all-around places, and several were exclusively focused on plastic food. Window displays. Ice cream, sushi, pasta (with fork hanging in midair above the plate), soup, crepes, all foods and all shapes and sizes. Really hilarious stuff, but surprisingly real-looking. Those were hilarious.
One store on this street where I stopped to buy something, after purchasing I was offered a cup of ice cold barley tea. I love barley tea, first of all, and second they were so nice about it and smiled and made me feel special.

From there I walked to Asakusa, which had a few streets selling somewhat touristy-type stuff, which was most definitely fun, and grabbed dinner at a small place where I picked my dinner based on the plastic food choices. The waitress and cooks behind the counter kept trying to ask me questions and I never understood them, but that was okay. One guy had a few words of English and so I could answer his questions pretty well.

One thing I like about Tokyo is that everyone presumes you know Japanese until you look at them funny and say ‘iie nihongo’ (no Japanese) and often times they have no English so you just have to get by, but at least they give you the chance. Although it is hard for me to get by (like I said yesterday) it is still fun, and I feel like they don’t treat me like an idiot here. Although the fact that I don’t speak the language leaves me panicked every now and then, it also means I feel twice as accomplished every time I get something right or do something. And at the least the things I do know how to say I can say well enough that people think I might speak Japanese from them. Though I also think that going five days without having a real conversation might drive me crazy. But so far so good, and tomorrow I have high hopes—I plan on traveling to Tsukiji—the biggest fish market in the world! That means I have to wake up early—I need to get there by about 7:30, but I am going to have sushi as fresh as it gets and see Tuna as big as me (I hope). So now I’m going to go take a soak in the hostel’s public bath (it is open for men 4 hours and women only 1—so unfair!) and head to bed before it gets too late. Until tomorrow!