Day 3 in Tokyo: Raw chicken, anyone?

Tokyo day 3:

Did you know that they give out samples of Sake at the grocery stores here? Go figure.
So I woke up at a bright and early 6:30 AM to get ready to go to Tsukigi (pronounced like squeegee but with a k instead of a qu—the u in this case is essentially silent) and see fish and eat sushi, only to discover that it was raining. Deciding that fish would not be half as much fun in the rain, I went back to bed (no tears there). Going back to bed wasn’t torture, however, on account of my figuring out how the air-con works. Hooray!

So I got up, grabbed another onigiri at the 7-11 (salmon this time—mmmm) and headed over to an area called omote-sando. My first stop was a museum that ended up being closed, so I walked down to this little museum which specializes in ukio-e (woodblock prints). It was really cute and had all these woodblock prints of different subjects related to kabuki. From there I headed down Takeshita-dori (dori means street, or at least I think it does), which is where all the teenagers go to get their clothing (or if you’re in need of cheap lingerie or drag costume) and noticed I believe five or six crepe stands. Crepes are a snackfood here, often served with ice cream, fruit, and/or chocolate sauce, but if you’re in the mood for a savory one you can also find wholesome tuna with tomato sauce or sliced ham with mayo. I grabbed lunch at a Yoshinoya (a chain) which was not as good as the hype, and from there wanted to cross the tracks to the park and shrine on the other side. Not being able to see how to do this, I decided that if I walked along the tracks there would have to be a bridge or underpass soon. I guess I picked the wrong direction. A mile later I found an underpass, but by then had walked most of the entire length of the park.

A bonus of this walk was that I passed by a GA Houses bookstore, which was cute and fun. Saw some familiar books in there and flipped through some neat things.

Eventually reaching the top of the park, I was greeted by a giant Shinto-style arch. This thing must have been 20 feet from post to post with the lintel just as high. The wood logs used for the posts would probably take three people to encircle them. Talk about awe-inspiring! The park was the area surrounding the Meiji-Jingu, or shrine to the entombed bodies of the Emperor and Empress Meiji. The shrine itself was pretty, but not that impressive (nobody was allowed anywhere near the entrance. However, one tradition is to write a wish on a plaque and hang it up. Every year in September or so they burn all the plaques from the year. Some of the wishes were pretty funny, and I took pictures. One example, just to get you excited for it, is: "May Dusty be having fun at the cat hotel and may my family be happy and Dylan not too pissed at me and may I have lots of stories to tell at camp if I go there and not to Africa. <3, Caroline (Toronto)". I had fun reading those.

The park itself was amazing, though. It was really a thick woods in the middle of Tokyo. There isn’t much more to say about it, but wow, it was surprising to see such a dense area of forest in the middle of a huge city.

After walking back to the other end, feeling a bit tired by this point, I hopped on the metro to Rippongi to visit the highest museum in the world, or the highest gallery, or something like that. Located on the 53rd floor of the Mori tower, the Mori Art Museum does rotating exhibits, and currently they have a most excellent exhibit dedicated to Le Corbusier. The exhibit had a full-size reproduction of his atelier, a lot of his art from various periods in his life, videos going through his buildings, computer generated videos of how he designed proportions for some of his other buildings, photographs, models, documentaries, a life-size reproduction of one of his apartments, with the actual apartment furnishings on the first floor (the second floor was all plaster), a nice section on the carpenter center at Harvard, which apparently was a great time to talk about how much he hated New York, a replica of his summer vacation home in the South of France (which was very small—only about 4 meters square), and even some of the furniture he designed. The exhibit was well put together, interesting, and fun.

The 52nd floor of the building was occupied by an observatory, from where I could see Tokyo. The city just goes on and on forever in all directions it seems. There really wasn’t an end to the urban part of the city anywhere except the ocean. The Tokyo skyline isn’t anything of particular note, and so though it was nice there isn’t much to comment on. I enjoyed myself and left afterwards feeling ready for dinner.

I found a place for dinner in the nearby area, which turned out to specialize in Yakitori (things on sticks). I had rare chicken with wasabi on a stick (definitely the best one), asparagus wrapped in bacon, okra wrapped in bacon, an egg omelet with green onion and bacon (not on a stick), and eggplant with fresh ginger. Everything was smoky from the grill and delicious, and the cook spoke a little English as he had lived for a year in Australia. He and I talked a little bit as I was the only person in the restaurant, and overall it was a good choice.

After dinner I headed back to the hotel, where you find me now. I’m going to make another attempt at Tsukiji tomorrow, and am going to try and take it easy tonight, as I have a little bit of a headache and tomorrow I need to be up early (again)!