Quik Thinking

Today's daytime excursions were in Ueno, the most museum-happy of Tokyo. First was the National Science Museum, where I got one of those headphone guide devices because all the text on the exhibits was in Japanese. I spent the bulk of my time checking out the sections on animal life, both prehistoric and current. I was impressed by the depth and quality of their exhibits, which include some unique specimens like the Columbian Mammoth of which I took a photograph. I ended my visit to that museum by checking out the technology section, which highlights the scientific interactions between Japan and other countries throughout history. While the museum is proud of the significant technological contributions of Japan to the world, I noticed that it does not shy away from giving other countries credit either.

Having spent a few hours learning about zoology, it was only appropriate that my next stop was the Tokyo Zoo, where I was pleased to see that the elephants were very affectionate with each other. The tiger, however, seems to have turned vegetarian as he's the skinniest tiger I've ever seen. More distressing still were the cramped quarters in which the poor hippo and giraffe are housed. I don't understand why some animals are treated to expansive and well-designed living areas while others languish in cramped cages.

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I love museums so when I discovered this morning that for ¥2,000 I could get access to dozens of museums in Tokyo, I immediately knew how I was going to spend my next few days. But before hitting the museum circuit I explored the Imperial Gardens surrounding the Imperial Palace at the heart of Tokyo. [The Japanese imperial family has the longest unbroken lineage of any monarchy in history, having ruled the country since 660 BC.] The gardens are surrounded by a moat and the walls within them are made of 35-ton granite blocks.

Upon leaving the gardens I went to the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art, where they had some pretty interesting stuff, including looping animated pictures housed within frames to appear like regular paintings. They even gave me special permission to photograph a sculpture - Eve looking dejected after eating the apple - that caught my fancy. After lunch I visited the Bridgestone museum, where my favourite piece was a cubist (I presume) interpretation of Rodin's famous sculpture, The Kiss, in which the figures looked like blockheads.

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Imperial_gardens_and_TMOMA.zip (10.7 MB)

On Sunday afternoon Chris took me to Yoyogi park, which is supposed to be like Dolores park (in hipsterness not size) but it was overrun by tourists. That small defeat was dwarfed, however, by a mind-blowing chance encounter with a pair of good friends from Montreal whom I hadn't seen in a couple of years. Unbeknowest to me, they just happened to be visiting Tokyo at the same and we wound up in the same part of the park. Originally, Chris and I had planned to check out a ninja restaurant for dinner but after the initial shock had worn off, Chris called the ninjas and expanded our reservation so we could all have dinner together.

Upon arriving at the restaurant, we were shown to our seats by a waiter decked out in ninja garb and after we'd ordered from the set-course menus, ninjas proceeded to bring us courses at intervals so rapid I couldn't keep up. While the food was all very good, my favourite dish was the tempura, which handily beat out any tempura I'd ever had before. By special request from Steph, I took photos of the food. Just before we had our desserts, a ninja came over to our table and performed some magic tricks. At a mere two feet from us, it was impressive that we barely noticed how he did any of them.

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The Onsen and capsule hotel are on a synthetic island made o f landfill in the Tokyo harbour. Upon emerging from the capsule hotel in the morning, we wandered around the island for a bit until the museum of science and technology opened at 10am. I was struck by the number of Japanese teens who wander around without the parental supervision that seems necessary in North America. Maybe the Japanese are less paranoid because their society is safer.

Once the museum opened, we went in and ate lunch before checking out the exhibits. I was amused to see that there was a man whose job appeared to consist of pushing buttons for people using the ticket-dispensing machine! Honda's Asimo robot is a huge hit with the kids and I noted the contrast between the Japanese idea of a robot as cute and the American idea of a robot as fierce. O thought the mechanical router was a great way to illustrate the concepts of network data transfer to kids in an interactive and visual manner. Disappointingly, the special pterosaur exhibit was almost entirely in Japanese.

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science_and_tech_museum_etc.zip (12.8 MB)

After the bus tour, we rode the amazing Tokyo subway to a a place that offered onsen (hot-springs) and a capsule hotel. I'd long wondered what it would be like to sleep in a capsule hotel and the Tokyo subway stops running at midnight so we needed a place to crash anyway. The hot-springs were almost entirely filled with Koreans! I had to stick a band-aid over my tattoo to avoid being mistaken for a member of the Yakuza (Japan's organized crime rings). But I got to wear a yakata (traditional Japanese bathrobe), which was pretty neat.

We had some trouble gaining access to the capsule hotels because none of the staff spoke any English. Eventually one of them resorted to using a Web translator, which did the trick. The capsule hotels did not quite match my expectations of a tempofoam coffin in a drawer, being more like bunk beds in a hostel.

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On Saturday, after picking up an SD card for my camera, Chris and I met up with his neighbour and coworker Dennis to go on a bus tour of Tokyo along with a couple of other tourists who were visiting from Perth. Our first stop was a bonsai garden run by a man who has been collecting the little trees for the past three decades and now teaches foreigners the art of growing bonsai. He showed us some of his prized specimen and answered our many questions about the art form, after which we partook in a green tea ceremony.

The next stop was a special event to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Kyoto's only geisha house. We were treated to a lovely performance by a troupe of dancers keeping alive the ancient art of the Japanese courtesans (who weren't geisha). The tradition of the courtesan dance is that every year these women would parade through the street and then select a suitor to join them for a tea ceremony. First the suitor would drink from the tea bowl and then, if she chose to do so, the courtesan would signify her acceptance of his love by finishing the bowl.

Our tour concluded with a dinner of tempura and sushi aboard a little boat where we were watched the sunset amongst the skyscrapers of Tokyo and learnt a great deal about Japanese history.

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hato-bus-tour.zip (13.68 MB)

Exploiting my jetlag, we beat the tourists to the Tokyo fish market in Tsukiji. Everywhere we walked there were men on motorized carts trying to run us over. Bathed in the scent of raw fish, this was a market my grandparents would have loved. Having stoked our appetite, we proceeded across the street for the best sushi I've ever had. Never having been frozen, this fish made all prior sushi experiences seem like warmed-up leftovers.

Because it was still very early, we decided to explore the inside of a skyscraper and a mall. Although the buildings were open, there was nobody around and none of the stores were open yet. It felt like being inside a William Gibson novel!

After flying into Narita airport, renting a cellphone and taking a shuttle to Tokyo, I bumbled my way to my friend Chris' studio apartment. We grabbed a quick bite at a nearby eatery called Yoshinoya and then Chris showed me a multi-storey building, Shin-Maru Biru, that was filled with fancy restaurants. There was even a grocery store at which I satisfied my craving for some red-bean paste-filled snack.

Today we are going to beat the tourists by going to a fish market at 5am and then set off on a bus tour of Tokyo.