I’ve only got on an average of one day a week that doesn’t have any commitments. Most weeks we’ll have some sort of culture class activity, for example, tomorrow we’re going to be doing Kabuki stuff. But today was completely free, and I celebrated by sleeping in until 7:10 am.

My plan for today was to go to Northern Tokyo and hit up the main places. I was going to start with Sensoji and Nakamisedori, then meander over to Ueno park and go to one of the museums that are there. So I got on my typical subway from Nishi-Waseda to Shinjuku san-chome, transferred to the Marunouchi line and went to Ginza station, then got on the Ginza line and followed it to it’s final station at Asakusa.

Note: There are two regions of Tokyo with very similar names that I often get confused. There’s “Asakusa,” which is in Northern Tokyo and is part of Tokyo’s old Shitamachi, so it has a traditional feel to it. And then there’s “Akasaka,” which is (apparently, since I haven’t been there yet) a more business-y area. Politicians go there to socialize a lot, and it’s also where the JapanesePod offices are, where I’ll go on Monday.

Getting off the subway in Asakusa, it’s obvious what the main tourist destination is. There are many signs written in English showing exactly how to get to Sensoji. There were a disproportionate number of gaijin (foreigners) in the area around the station, and they were all obediently following the arrows.
While the Sensoji temple is the main draw, it’s not where the tourists spend the most time. The street leading up to the temple is a famous shopping street called Nakamisedori. At the front of that street is this gate, the “Kaminarimon” (Thunder gate). It’s pretty famous, as determined by the number-of-people-posing-for-pictures-in-front-of-it scale. It’s kind of funny to watch the tourist impulse of making sure one has a picture of oneself in front of famous places. I can understand why people do it, but it seems to send a funny message. Like, “the guys at the office will not believe me,” or, “I need to justify myself to myself.” Oh well, it’s not as if I’m somehow above it.

I didn’t dwell much at the gate, but was more interested in Nakamise dori. It was still early, so not all the stores were open, but it was still pretty packed. As you might be able to expect, the merchandise being sold was nakedly marketed towards tourists. The things that somebody who has never been to Japan thinks about when somebody mentions Japan are all available to fulfill those simplistic expectations upon the return home. I’m talking about plastic samurai swords, cheap Noh masks, shirts with kanji on them, postcards with woodblock prints on them… It wasn’t all cheap, though. Even though there were many stores playing that kitschy sort of Japanese music — the kind that might be chosen by a well-intentioned 60-something as background music for an “asian night” potluck — there were some quality things there as well. I have to put it in perspective: it was nothing compared to China. In the touristy areas around Beijing, you are bombarded with some of the most worthless looking objects — things that only strive to be “old looking” and somehow fail — that it’s hard to find anything worth buying at all.

Nakamisedori still has some dignity to it. The store workers aren’t obnoxious, the food is worth buying, and there’s still an aura of genuineness that is hard to pin down. It seems to operate in spite of the tourists, not thanks to them.

The temple itself, Sensoji, is still a legitimate Buddhist temple. It seemed that Japanese were still the majority by far, despite there being a ton of gaijin. While religion in Japan is generally more of a tradition than a serious guiding force behind life, many Japanese still make the trek to temples from time to time. There are a number of rituals that they can partake in, such as bell ringing, ritualistic washing, drawing lots (good luck or bad luck), rubbing statues, or doing stuff with incense. My ignorance probably shows through in this description, but we’re going to have a culture class seminar on Japanese religion on the first of August, so I’ll be able to say more at that time.

For tourists, the draw is two-fold. First, they imagine Buddhist temples in their mind when they picture Japan, so they get some sort of buzz from seeing the real thing. Second, the temples and the grounds around them are often very beautiful. At Sensoji, there were plenty of flowers, bridges, grassy areas. I didn’t take any pictures around the temple grounds, but it was about what you would expect — if you were expecting anything.

I wound up getting done with the Sensoji/Nakamisedori experience after about two hours, so I decided to head off to Ueno park. I could have paid 120 yen and rode the subway directly to the entrance of the park, but if you’ve been reading my blog so far you know that’s not my style. With the understanding that Ueno park is generally west of Sensoji, I started walking down the street. The gaijin began to dissipate, and the town began to look more and more like a normal Tokyo commercial area. Not bad, certainly, but nothing to cater to the non-resident who is on a best-of-Tokyo tour. There seemed to be a lot of second-hand toy shops in the area.

It was about a mile and a half from Sensoji to Ueno Park. If I would have walked in a straight line, it would have been less. In the busy area between the nearest station and the park itself, I was approached twice by the dreaded English-speaking botherers. I’ll discuss Tokyo street etiquette a bit later, but rule one is that you don’t ever just talk to strangers on the street. They will perhaps politely respond to a question or a comment, but you will soon understand that this isn’t the venue. You can’t just make friends on the street like you can in (some places in) America.

So when anybody starts to strike up a conversation with YOU, the foreigner, it means one of two things: they either harmlessly just want to practice English, or they are up to no good. The first guy said something along the lines of “Hello! Hello! Speak English?” and was holding a box that said “Need emergency aid!” with the word “English” on there about five times. You need to immediately question the legitimacy of any Japanese person who is asking only the few English speakers in the city for help financially. The word is out that we are suckers, people. I was able to brush him off simply by not deviating from my Tokyo-mode-walk, that is, no eye contact, quick walking, look of purpose in eyes. The other guy was just outside the park, and said something similar: “Hello! You English?” He too was easy to brush off, but I was eager to get out of the crowd because I didn’t know how I would react if it happened a third time.

There was no place I would rather be at that moment than in a park, so it was a good thing that I was now in Tokyo’s most popular public park. It was very shady, but open. Many parts of it felt more like a plaza with trees all around it rather than a proper park. That’s because the park generally acts as a hub for several attractions that it contains. There’s the Tokyo National Museum, The National Science Museum, The Shitamachi Museum, The National Museum for Western Art, The Orient Museum, the Tokyo Metropolitan Fine Art Gallery, the Ueno Zoo, a shrine devoted to Tokugawa Ieyasu, and a large pond area. I headed toward the pond.

There were two large water areas, one of which is in this picture. All the water was completely filled with these weird lilly-things. I’m not much of a plant person, so I don’t know what they were, but they took up the majority of the pond area. There was a proper pond a little further down, and you could rent a duck boat and float around in it if you wanted (they were actually swans, but I like the sound of “duck boat” better). I also saw some festival type stalls open in this area, including fish scooping, yakisoba, chocolate bananas, takoyaki (octopus balls…that is, balls which have octopus inside), and kakigori (shaved ice). I had kakigori at Nakamisedori, and it was still about 11, so I wasn’t hungry enough to eat there. I lingered for a while and looked at the koi ponds with turtles in them, wandered past another temple area, and sat on a rock bench watching an ugly woman feed birds. I decided to then hit up the next cool place in Tokyo, the National Museum.

On the way, I passed a lot of people sitting as if in an audience, but there was no performer yet. I did not linger there long enough to figure out what they were waiting for. There was also a really wide area with a fountain. Here, the street noise had finally been drowned out. As I got closer to the museum, things started looking classier and classier. The museum itself was really nice. It was 400 yen with a student discount nice. I was able to buy my tickets from, of course, a vending machine. Inside the museum, there were also free lockers that I could use to finally get my camera bag off my shoulder. It’s small, but anything hanging on your shoulder for three hours gets irritating after a while. It was fine, though, because I didn’t need my camera inside the museum. You know why? Because it’s really, really stupid to take pictures of all the exhibits in a museum. Nearly wherever I went, there were people just going from exhibit to exhibit, taking a picture of each one. It’s as if to say, “I don’t really care to appreciate this now, but perhaps later I will understand why I’m supposed to care about it.” It’s just another one of my pet peeves. Looking at pictures is something we do when we are not doing anything else. When you’re actually at a museum, it’s cool because you can see the real objects with your own eyes. Who wants to see pictures of museum exhibits? Nobody does. Okay, thanks, glad we got that covered.

The museum gift shop had some really high quality (read: expensive) merchandise, including some great reproductions of woodblock prints. There was a decent book section as well, but I can’t read well enough to justify buying anything. As for the museum itself, I’m a little spoiled having had been to the London Musuem and the Louvre, but there were some pretty good exhibits here as well. The room filled with maps of the world drawn in the 16th century was pretty cool. So was the room with a bunch of swords. The only thing the museum didn’t have was restaurants that didn’t cost at least 1,200 yen per plate. I had to get lunch after leaving, so my hungriness probably affected how long I was willing to stay there.

After leaving, it was about 1:00. Enough time to check something else off the list of things to do before I left. I decided to get on the Yamanote line (the train line that goes in a circle around the busiest stations) and get off at the closest big station. We passed Akihabira, the electronics capital of the world, but I’m okay with saving that for another day. Instead, I got off at the Tokyo station, not really knowing what was cool around there. As it turned out, this was where the Imperial Palace was. Alright, cool, that’ll work I guess.

The Imperial Palace itself is closed off to the public for most of the year except for two days: January 2nd and December 23rd. December 23rd is the day that I leave, but I don’t leave until the afternoon, so I might be able to sneak a peak. Who knows.

Anyway, the part of the Imperial Palace that people actually get to appreciate all year round are the surrounding gardens. There are a bunch of really wide areas with trees planted like the picture on the left. People aren’t allowed to go in them, and it looks better because of it.

Most of the people are clustered in the closest point to the palace itself that the public can get to, taking pictures. I followed suite, and got the exact same picture that the ten people lined up next to me got. Maybe my composition is better or something.

There really isn’t a whole lot to do there, except for ponder about historical issues. I didn’t anticipate coming here today, so I hadn’t done any preparation about the place. Apparently there’s a pretty good Japanese garden around the area that I missed. And I pretty much didn’t understand much of the significance of the area while I was there. This is why I like having control over where I go, and being able to pick and choose where to go on a certain day. I’m able to get so much more out of a place if I know what to expect and look for, and know some of the history about it. When I just get lead around from place to place, it’s awful. So, I’ll come back to the Imperial Palace some day, after researching it a bit. Maybe then I can explain a little bit about it.

After touristing for the day, I waked about 3 miles back to Shinjuku San-Chome station. I passed the National Theater as I did, which is where we’re going to see Kabuki tomorrow. Speaking of which, I need to get up early to go to the lecture. This entry is over 2,300 words long, and you cannot possibly ask more out of me. See you tomorrow.