day 45! tsukiji, sumidagawa, asakusa, shibuya

Mission Impossible 3 was preeeetty good. But daaaayam Tom Cruise is getting old. We all slept like logs, and it was kind of creepy that the room was dead silent. I woke up a few times in the morning to see Taiga sitting on a chair, staring at everyone and watching them sleep. Taiga is...an oddball. lol. But very loveable. :) Anyway aside from that Twilight Zone moment, nothing much happened and we woke up the next morning pretty rested.

Checkin' my mails~ Taiga's still wearing his suit cuz he didn't bring a change of clothes...

These are the cute little futons that Tatsuya had for us to sleep on. I want some for my apartment, how convenient! It's folded into thirds right now, so it's easy to store...

No one was particularly hungry, and Ayano was unable to join us as we'd originally planned, so we took a leisurely walk down Sumidagawa (sumida river) to work up their appetites. It was a reaaally beautiful day out, and the view was super nice. :) I think if I lived in Japan I'd want to be near a river, to break up the monotony of the city. Tatsuya lives kind of on the East side of Tokyo though, near Ueno, Tokyo station, and Ginza, and I used to live (and would rather live) towards the West side. It's nice where he is though. :) Really affluent. But I think a little quieter....

Pretty flowers next to the walkway. I really like that about Tokyo..there isn't TOO much greenery (anymore) but Japanese people do love them some nature so they take care to plant their own mini gardens (WITH MINI FLOWERS) and other little plots of beauty such at this one.

We walked down Sumidagawa until we reached Tsukiji (the fish market!!) where we all came to the unanimous conclusion that we were hungry. :) I like taking candid photos but Taiga always catches me and poses for the shot hehe...

See???

Mmmm fish. So there's the fish auction (happens at 5am), the inner fish market, and the outer fish market. The auction is somewhat closed to outsiders (any visitors at all, not just foreigners), and there is a limited viewing space of ~150 people/day. I've never actually seen it before...that would be pretty sweet. But even taking the first train isn't early enough so it would take some careful planning. The inner fish market has tons of people driving around on little Segway-like machinery that carry around huge crates of fish and other sea creatures. I went there with Saigi, 4 years ago, and almost got mowed down a million times. Also they don't give a shit about running you over cuz they hate having foreigners in there :D you're pretty much going to their office and taking pictures of their spreadsheets. It's really cool to see though, tons of stands with alllllllllllllll varieties of marine life. The outer fish market is where normal people go to buy fish to cook at home -- since it's already been packaged and priced here. The sushi restaurants are all out there as well.

We are in the outer fish market. :)

A small clip of the outer fish market.

Taiga brought us to a sushi place that he'd been to before (I think).

Arisa and Taiga are excited for sushi. What a cute pic!

This is what I got. :o :o :o Itwassogood.

Umm lol and this is what Kurt got. Because he is a fancy gourmand. :D And braver than the rest of us.

It looks so dopey...!

Derp. :3

Some giant shelled things that Taiga ordered.

The meal was suuuuper good though. :) Not cheap but not too expensive for what you're getting, I guess. It all just tastes so fresh and unrubbery. I had some uni (sea urchin) in my bowl that I distinctly remember not liking the last time I tried it, but this time it was pretty good. It tastes a lot like mmm crab brains. hehe.

After lunch we headed over to Asakusa (relatively nearby) for the Sanja Matsuri, which I would never have known about if it weren't for my buddies. :p Matsuri means festival in Japanese, but I don't know the historical significance of this one exactly, something about renewing your dedication to the gods, so go wiki it. XD I'm not your mom!!

Asakusa is famous for this huge gate, Kaminarimon, which has a huge lantern hanging down from it. For the festival though, they compressed and secured it, to protect it from the crowds.

There was a cute little kitty on this box, and at first I thought it was cute cuz I thought it had jumped up there to escape the swarms of people. But after a while we realized that some guy had brought his kitties there (there were two of em) and put them up there for attention. That guy's a dick, and I hope the Sanja Matsuri gods punish him with herpes.

There are two gods on either side of the door, this one is the wind god. According to Taiga he is not as popular as the lightening god! It seemed like such a ..cute? petty? worldly? thought, that certain gods are popular but certain gods are not. But I s'pose in any polytheistic civilization, that is the case, that certain gods are more respected/revered than others. How interesting. What's the point of being a god if you can't get attention from people??? O_O I'm picturing the lesser ones sitting at home playing Sudoku all day out of boredom....... 

The lightening god.

Past kaminarimon, there are three or four columns of stands/shops/booths. Not really stands, because they're quite permanent. Most are selling little trinkets (it's a good place for finding stereotypical Japanese souvenirs), and there are a lot selling little snacks like senbei or ningyoyaki (baked dolls), which Asakusa is known for.

As you can see, it's pretty crowded!

We stop to get some soft serve (soft cream) at a little booth, they had super interesting flavors. Taiga is having ume (plum) soft cream.

Mine is almond. :D It's super effective!!!

Tatsuya had a matcha. He was also not ready for this pic. lol.

Kurt got a peach, and I don't remember what Arisa had. (And see there's Taiga again!!) Oh and Kurt wasn't ready for this pic either I guess. Sorry! It's the only one that had Arisa's ice cream in it.

We had our ice creams near a cooler full of drinks. There was a row of drink shaped like Hello Kitty so I took a pic for you Janet.

And also a row shaped like the kaminarimon (the lantern).

While we were having ice cream a random moving musical group rolled on by. They are all playing traditional Japanese instruments. We saw a few different ones throughout the festival. :)

And here comes an omikoshi! A mikoshi is, according to Wikipedia because I also don't know its actual purpose, a vehicle to transport a deity while moving between the main shrine and a temporary shrine at a festival, or moving it to a new temple. They're incredibly heavy. They look like little seating pavilions, you know? The ones that rich sultans get carried around on, only these are smaller but much much more ornate. All of them look different, and most have some sort of emblem or animal at the top (most commonly a phoenix I think).

According to Arisa, the Asakusa area? ward? is split into many districts, and each district has its own omikoshi, and they all assemble a team of I dunno, volunteers or conscripts, to represent them during the festival.

I told her I would be rooting for District 12. ^^v

And if you didn't get that reference for the love of god (whichever one you like best) go buy Hunger Games and read it! That shit's good.

This omikoshi is being carried by little kids. :D Cute! They seemed to hate it though. They probably want to be watching cartoons. I guess I kind of do too.

You can see from the pics that the omikoshi teams are all wearing different colors. I guess the uniform color varies from district to district. :)

They're also wearing cute little shoes, the big toe + rest of your toes split kind.

Aaaaand here is a video of them carrying the thing!


They do this cute little chant thing while they're carrying it, to keep everyone moving at the same pace, on the same beat. Like I said, the thing is damn heavy so they need every possible exposed bit of it to be manned, which makes it really uncomfortable and hard to move/walk, since you are pretty much smooshed up against the person in front of and behind you. So to help with coordination, they keep a rhythm going. Also I like to think that they chant because it is very cute and Japanese people are very cute. :) That is probably just second priority though.


There's usually a few people leading the way, parting the crowds, then after the omikoshi there is another blob of people walking along behind it, waiting to tag in to help carry the thing. Arisa said that they start/pick up their mikoshi at their own shrine, in whatever district they're in, carry it to the Asakusa temple, let god disembark and do whatever he's there to do at the temple, then carry it back. Depending on the district, it can be reaaaallly far away! Even the closer ones, it's super hard to carry something that heavy that far. You can see how much these dudes are sweating (and it is a hot day). So yah they definitely need the tagger-in-ers.

You can sort of see what happens here when the coordination goes astray. :) These guys lost control of their omikoshi. :o Wild omikoshi on the loose!! Beware!! The people speaking English in the background are me and Kurt.


Well so I took about a billion pics/videos of people carrying various omikoshi, but they all sort of look the same. After we got tired of being pushed to the sides to let the huge things through, we started making for the temple near the back of all the stands/booths.

This guy is hand making ningyoyaki. Those other metal molds are already filled and are cooking on that heated stove.

Ahhhh and we arrive at the best part of the festival -- the food stands!! :D Here are some cotton candy bags and a foreigner standing in front of em. Grrr foreigners. Get out of our country!!! lol jp. Anyway Asakusa is definitely a touristy area so there are a toooon of foreigners around. Chinese, Korean, American, European, tonstonstons.

These looked yummy. T_T I think it's like yakisoba or okonimiyaki, with an egg on top.

More colorful penises for Janet. Kurt would not touch them. :(

TAKOYAKI!!!!!

There were a ton of food stands around. There are usually some, but not nearly this many. They only had a lot on account of the festival. The food is all rather shoddily made cuz well, it's cheap fast festival food, and no one's eating it for the quality. Still fun though. :)

Me and Arisa! We look tired don't we. We are tired. And my teeth aren't brushed. :(

A huuuuge sandal. I'm sorry this post is not very concise.

We made it to the temple!!! Before you go worship at the temple, you are supposed to cleanse yourself. There is always some sort of well of running water near every temple. This one is particularly grandiose (with a statue and all), others are more simple. 

There is a bit of a ritual about the cleansing part, though really all you need to do is 1) pick up the water scooper and fill with water 2) pour some water into your hands, sip some of the water, rinse your mouth, and spit out 3) pour some water into your hands and wash them 4) take whatever is left in the scooper and use it to clean the handle of the scooper. If you watch older people do it though, it's a very elegant and simple little ritual. :) If you watch younger people do it, sometimes it's just them drinking directly from the scooper or pouring water back into the well (gross). :/ ahhh young'uns.

The temple!!!

An omikoshi doin it's thang at the temple.

We didn't actually battle our way through the crowds to get to the temple. You can't go inside anyway so it's fine to look from the outside. Also I went to see it up close last time I was there. The battle to reach the temple was exhausting and we were all hot anyway so we decided to head out.

Saw these lanterns on the way, they have the names of various sponsors for the festival written on em. I'd always wondered what they were for...actually now that I think about it it should have been obvious.

There are a lot of these guys parked near kaminarimon and in front of the station. They're pretty much exactly what they look like, they wear the traditional garb of a wheelbarrow cart roller (dunno the proper name) and take you where you want to go. Like I said, Asakusa. Very touristy.

Walked back down to the river (probably still Sumidagawa) to cool off and rest a bit. Taiga got a Sprite and the Sprites here are labeled funny. Retro marketing kickback??

We stayed here by the river in the shade for almost an hour, talking. We weren't sure of what to do next so we headed back to the station. It was maybe 5 o'clock? Arisa was talking about maybe some bowling or billiards, or getting some strange coffee gelatin dessert. But I think we were all sort of tired, and not used to hanging out all day, like she is. :) The boys were tired anyway. Taiga wanted to change out of his suit, and Tatsuya flat out said that he kinda wanted to head home. It may not sound like much but it's pretty rare for someone in Tokyo to just speak their mind and give an opinion lol. So we decided to disband for the day. :) They said we'd try to all meet up again before I left, I hope that we do. But anyway it was so great to see them again. <3 I love how they're all busy but they still found the time to come out and see me. :) Thankssss guysss!!

Kurt and I thought it was still a little early to head back though (tired though we were), and since the subway line we were planning to take terminated in Shibuya anyway, we went there. :) SHIBUYA!!! My home. :D <3

This is the famous Shibuya crossing (pictured in most movies that need to show a lot of Japanese people crossing a street).

Hmmm. Shibuya. I love Shibuya. :) I used to wander around here all the time, since, as most of you know, since I talk about it waaaay too much, I had a commuter pass (for trains) that I could pay a flat monthly fee for, that went between my dorm and my school. I could exit at any station along that path, and it was free. Since Shibuya was my transfer station, and one of the biggest ones on my path, I went there a looooot. All the time. :)
Shibuya is hm, maybe one of the fashion centers in Tokyo? It has a lot of department stores, and the people that hang around Shibuya tend to be fashionable young people. The clothing style is sort of clubbing/sexy/slutty type. Of course, not all the clothes they sell there are like that but that is a good place to find some? :3

It's so strange though. This thread of conversation came up many times for the rest of the day with Kurt but, I/we feel like...........Tokyo has changed. It's so weird! I was here 4 years ago. I came for maybe 1.5 weeks, 2 years ago. In that time, nothing that I had remembered that changed much. All the stores I knew were still there, people looked the same. But now...............holy good god there are a lot of foreigners here now. O_O They appeared out of nowhere! True, even 4 years ago, foreigners were no rare sighting. There were always some around, you'd see em enough that it wasn't a gasp and point situation. But now?? There are TONS. Everywhere I looked, foreigners. :o And the TYPE of foreigner is different now. It used to be a bunch of skinny white nerdy dudes <.< (we all know who I'm looking at) but now it's like....frat bros! And big fried chicken eating American types! and oh so many French people. Wtf?? It really seriously shocked me. What happened in the last two years???

I know it's completely hypocritical of me to think so, but I don't like it. :( At all. Tokyo filled with tons of Westerners that look like they stepped out of Abercrombie and Fitch, being loud and disrespectful, asking touristy questions loudly in English. :( I'm sad on both fronts, I'm kind of bummed cuz I don't want Tokyo to change, and I'm also kind of bummed that foreigners are being represented in such a way to Japanese people. Is that selfish and racist? Then I guess I'm selfish and racist. :( It really made me sad.

Also a lot of stores around Shibuya had changed. They now have a Forever 21, probably owing to the huge success of the 5 story Forever 21 that they opened in Harajuku a few years ago. There've also been many H&Ms dotting the area, and other American strip mall stores. ...really!??!? Damn you globalization. We've crossed the conceptual line where it is a useful implement for unifying worldwide efforts and increasing communication, to the horrible place where everything is slowly starting to look the same. Yah sure you can say that that's a long way from now, but these are the signs.............and I hate it, and again, ironic though it may be, I take it more personally when it comes to Tokyo....

Anyway after lots of lamenting and noticing of differences, we at least found one thing that stayed the same. :) Mura! The restaurant I used to work at. It looks exactly the same~

Here's the fake food display~ I was really really really happy to see it. :)

Stopped to get some coffee, but mainly to take a break. But in the seating area for maybe 20 to 25 people, like 1/4 of them were foreigners. D: More depression.

Excelsior is a cafe chain across Japan btw. :) Prices similar to but maybe a little lower than Starbucks.

After walking around Shibuya a bit (didn't shop or anything, just went through) we decided to walk to Harajuku, which is something else I used to like to do when I was a student. Harajuku wasn't on my free commuter line, and it's only one stop away from Shibuya. Which meant that if I took a train, I would have to pay the whole base fee (~$1.50) which isn't much but seems silly for just one stop. Also I was a student with no money but lots of free time. So I walked to Harajuku a lot, since it's my favorite area in Tokyo. :) There are also little shops to look at on the way.

Like this rock climbing/bouldering studio! I took a picture cuz well, Mammut. :3

All the boutiques in between had changed as well, though. :( Sad. They did open up a new Kiddyworld, which is a multi-story store with cute toys and things for various characters. You name it: Snoopy, Mickey Mouse, Rilakkuma, Totoro, they probably have it. It does say Kid in the title but..............everyone that goes to Kiddyworld finds something they want. :D Everyone!!

I am rather liking this character, "Sentimental Circus"? :)

After more walking, we finally reach Takeshita-doori! It's just a street in Harajuku, but it's where a lot of younger kids (middle/high school) like to go and shop. I....like to go and shop there too though cuz even though the clothes are more immature looking, I liked em, and they were cheaper. :x So sue me.

But they @#$*(@#$*ing changed that too. See the bright glowing lights and sign you can't read? It's all electronic now. It used to be like an old wooden sign or a banner or some such thing. Goddamn it. It's like when they commercialized that portion of Shilin night market (for tourists) and now no one goes there cuz IT SUCKS and no one likes commercialized things anyway. >( I'm mad. Oh well. Not everything has changed, a lot of the shops were still the same. But they did build like a 3 or 4 story department store mall thing. I just feel like it really ruins the vibe...

We didn't shop, we just walked up and down the street. By that time we were hungry so we went into a katsudon shop. ~~don just means ~~ rice bowl. Katsu is fried pork cutlet (?) so it's a fried pork cutlet rice bowl.

The family next to us was Singaporean and they had two annoying as fuck little girls that apparently could not survive without a billion electronics playing at once. See that iPad on the table, playing shows for them? Yah that thing didn't get turned off, not even while they were eating. Also it is loud and obnoxious for other customers and this is Tokyo so ffs turn off your fucking electronics. THIS IS THE PROBLEM WITH THE WORLD. And technology. And people. And kids. -_- I'm an old lady.

Dinner helped though. :3

We got katsu curry, so that's why there's also curry on the side.

While we were eating a huuuuge group of like 8 other foreigners came in, and made a fuss about not knowing what the menu items were. The sweet little waitress girl explained it to them in her broken English but it's like !??! I don't know. I just hate that attitude. Not that you have to learn Japanese, but you can't EXPECT other people to speak English for you. At least have the decency to appreciate it and/or be grateful. -_- It's just rude. Also there was a lady bein' all picky about her food and she needed something vegetarian so she made her go through all the items. >< It was frustrating to watch....


Anyway I'll stop harping on the issue cuz I guess it is a little petty. Dinner was great though, and pretty affordable. We were pooped so we headed home after that and got some actual sleep (with no Taiga staring at us). :3