| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
|
 |
|
Even with this admirable restraint, the carnival atmosphere seemed out of keeping with Western notions of dignity around religious sites. (I think I've heard that St. Peter's in Rome may be as surrounded by vendors as this.)
The temple itself was fairly impressive architecturally, but not notable in any obvious aspect. My knowledge of temples (and shrines) is very limited, so I can't comment on them very much. I suppose one might ask why I'm going to them. Some have historic interest (though many, especially in Tokyo, seem to be recent reconstructions, the originals having been destroyed either by the 1923 earthquake or the World War II bombing), but I guess it's more to see what Japanese tourists go to see. And there's also the feeling that there are some sights you have to see. We would be surprised if someone went to New York and didn't see the Statue of Liberty, or to Beijing and didn't see the Great Wall. And I claimed that when tourists left India, their film was checked and if they didn't have a picture of the Taj Mahal, they went told they couldn't leave until they had one. Well, here there seem to be some things one must see: Mt. Fuji, for example. While the temples and shrines are not quite on that level, I am still enough of a checklist sort of person to feel I should see them.
(Mt. Fuji may be a 'must-see' but it also turns out to be a 'hard-to-see,' as we discovered.)
After the temple, we walked over to Kappabashi, the wholesale restaurant supply district. The books implied that there were a lot of stores selling plastic food here, but it was almost entirely dishes, cutlery, signs, and other non-plastic-food items. The few plastic food places we saw were fairly expensive, which was a pity-they would have been good souvenirs.
It was only mid-afternoon, but we had started early and were tired, so we picked up some stamps at a post office and returned to the room, where we did not write our post cards. Getting back to Ikebukuro is not usually difficult (it's on two subway lines and the JR Yamanote line), but once in a while we end up somewhere where we need to ride a long way to change to the right line, or to change twice, or to switch from the subway to the JR Yamanote line, effectively having to pay twice, and this was one of those times.
Instead of writing post cards, we did laundry. There was a coin laundry a few blocks from the Kimi, so I took the week's accumulated laundry over and washed and dried it in under an hour. While I was there, someone (local, I assume) came in, put his laundry in the machine, took his shirt off, put this in the machine, put his yakuta (cotton bathrobe) on, took his pants off under them, and put them in the machine as well. From what I've heard, this is fairly common.
For dinner we went to a Chinese restaurant nearby. We had clams in a vinegar/soy sauce (cold), squid in spicy sauce (hot), clams in black bean sauce (hot), and soup with a thousand-year-old egg. This was our most expensive meal so far-¥2626-but certainly reasonable compared to prices back home.
After dinner we went over to Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, a concert hall nearby which was supposed to have a very exciting escalator. Well, it did go up the four stories of the atrium, but it was no more exciting than many in various subway systems. One book had claimed, 'It doesn't get much more exciting than this in Ikebukuro.' What a depressing thought!
On the way back to the Kimi it started to rain, so we cut through the subway station to get out of the drizzle for at least a couple of blocks. Rain, or at least overcast, has been our constant companion so far.
October 13, 1996: We've been skipping breakfast because we weren't sure where to find it, but today we picked up steamed pork buns at the convenience store for ¥88 each, and those made a reasonable breakfast. One reason Tokyo is so clean is that people don't eat (or drink) as they walk. If you buy something in a store or from a machine, you consume it there, and there are always trash bins and recycling bins at these places.
We took the train to Shibuya Station and went out onto Hachiko Square. Hachiko is Tokyo's 'Greyfriars Bobby' (a comparison that occurred independently to both Mark and me). Hachiko was a dog who used to wait at the station for his master, and kept doing so even after his master died. Both were honored by their cities, but Greyfriars Bobby was buried in a nice grave, while Hachiko was stuffed and put on display in Tokyo's Science Museum.
Because Japan's major religions don't have the tradition of a special day for rest and/or church attendance, Sunday mornings are just like other mornings. Stores are open and people are busy doing whatever they would do other days. Office workers do have a five-day week, as do schools (or possible a five-and-a-half-day week), but stores are open as early on Sunday as on other days. (On the other hand, the major department stores do close one day a week, but it's a different day for each chain.)
We went into a couple of music stores hoping to find some cassettes to supplement the ones we had brought. Because of all the power lines in Tokyo, particularly those near the Kimi, we are unable to pick up more than a couple of radio stations and they are more talk than music. So we've been listening to the cassettes a lot and need to get some different ones. But neither the Wave or HMV had any cassettes. I guess Japan is advanced enough that cassettes are considered old technology not worth bothering with. Everything is now CDs and mini-discs, with expensive vinyl for the real audiophile. We did not bring a CD played and did not want to buy one, so we'll have to make do and hope Kyoto has better radio.)
We walked over to NHK (the Japanese broadcasting company), but the tours there seemed to be in Japanese only and designed for tour groups, even to the extent of having a special spot for taking group pictures. (This spot didn't have an interesting background, just a sign for with NHK's logo, the date, and the tour number.) Many things in Japan are designed more for the tour group than the individual tourist. The same was true in countries such as China and the former Soviet Union, but there it was more a political thing about limiting individual freedom, while here it's more on doing things with your group. Some might claim the two are the same, but I don't think they are.
(Dave Griffiths claimed that the NHK tour was not all that interesting anyway, since what you see are actors pretending to do television broadcasting things, rather than an actual behind-the-scenes look. This sounds a bit like Universal Studios in Florida, but without the rides.)
The TEPCO Electric Energy Museum, on the other hand, was designed for individuals or families, and had some English, though not enough to use many of the interactive displays or understand the full explanations. (On the other hand, it was free, so we couldn't complain.) This was again Worlds Fair material, complete with a carousel theater like the one General Electric pioneered, which was narrated by a character who looked like a friendly version of the Wicked Witch of the West.
From here we walked to Harajuku, which is the area next to this part of Shibuya, though for some reason none of the maps for these two areas that we had seemed to fit together properly. It must have been a difference in scale or orientation. The day had turned sunny and hot, which was a nice change from a week of overcast and rain.
The main street of Harajuku was closed off as a pedestrian shopping mall and it was full of pedestrians shopping. We saw more Westerners here than we had the rest of our trip. But they (we) were still a very small percentage of the people.
We had lunch at Quintet, a noodle shop described in the Lonely Planet guide, though under a different name. The easiest way to order seems to be to copy down the names of what you want from the display outside and then show it to the waitress. This does limit you to items with not very complicated names, and to places with good penmanship.
We dropped in at Kiddyland which, as predicted, was packed with teenagers. I bought some Japanese baseball cards for my brother, and Mark commented on how the Japanese have failed to realize the marketing potential of Godzilla. They did have one or two Godzilla toys, but Ultraman seems far more popular here, and Disney characters outstrip them all.
One of the shops along this street was Condomania, which is part (I believe) of a chain dealing in condoms. (No big surprise, right?) In addition to condoms, they have other items such as oils, and also condom joke gifts and art (like a flowerpot with a little flower made of a rolled-up condom).
We stopped to find out how much the Ota Museum was in case we had time to come back to it. Our guide books are all a few years old and all disagreed anyway, but even the latest JNTO pamphlet was off. The admission is currently ¥900, steep by United States standards even if this is one of the best ukiyo-e (woodblock print) collections (outside of the one in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which is supposed to be the best in the world). (Interestingly, ¥900 is the same price as the condom flower in Condomania. I wonder if this means something.)
The main 'official' attraction in Harajuku is the Meiji Jingu Shrine, the major Shinto shrine in Tokyo. It was originally built in 1920, destroyed during World War II, and reconstructed by 1958, but as with most shrines, the reconstruction was faithful to the original, even in the materials used. This shrine was also busy, though not as busy as the shrine in Kamakura. We did see two wedding parties, but one seemed to be there more to pose for photographs in fancy wedding dress against the backdrop of the shrine (the woman was wearing a colorful kimono rather than the traditional white Shinto robe and headdress).
There was also a 'display' of dolls of all sorts with a sign above them saying good-bye to them. I'm not sure if this was some special thing, or a standard ritual of girls getting rid of their dolls at some point. One of the problems of traveling on one's own is that there is no one to as about these things, particularly when you don't speak the language at all.
And I am having definite problems remembering any Japanese that I learn. The phrase book is handy if I want to say exactly what it says, but I hardly ever do. For example, it will say, 'Is this the last train?' when I want to say, 'When is the last train?' and Japanese is complex enough that it's not obvious what changes to make. But I find that individual words are sometimes enough, and context is usually helpful. If we walk up to a train station ticket window and say 'Kamakura,' the clerk will probably understand that we want two tickets to Kamakura on the next train. There is a newer Lonely Planet phrase book, more than twice as thick (but costing less than twice as much). The problem with it is that it is too big to carry around in a shirt pocket any more; I'm glad we have the old one, which is convenient for reading some of the basic signs.
After the shrine we went to Harajuku's main 'unofficial' attraction: the performers in Yoyogi Park. Actually they are on the bridge from the main street to the park and at the entrance of the park, rather than in it. This is sort of like Speakers Corner in London in that the same people are back week after week (this happens only on Sunday, another similarity). According to the books, this is supposed to be rebellious youth, but the books go on to say that these young people don't drink alcohol or do drugs, usually perform as groups, and don't even wear their costumes to the park, but change in the public restrooms there. So I'm not sure why the books think this is rebellion-it sounds more like amateur performers to me. (One difference between these performers and those in, say, New York City is that these aren't asking for money.)
The stars of all this are what someone called the 'Dancing Elvises. |
|
| Copyright © - "Evelyn C. Leeper" |
|
 |
| Other travelogues by the same author: |
|
|
|
