古池や・かわず飛び込む・水の音

See, this is exactly why I don't keep a blog normally. I just start updating it less and less.

Partially because I'm not going to cool places as much, I guess? They're expensive! Really, the only major spot left on my list right now is Kyoto.

Destination for this weekend was Shibuya and Harajuku. I went to see crazy surreal Japanese fashionistas, but I think the rain scared them all away. Instead, I saw Meiji Shrine!

Photos time.


The path to the shrine was flanked by dangerous levels of NATURE.


Nature all over the place! Also, tourists.
I hear there are over 200 species of trees on and around the shrine complex.


Look! Some shrine, at last.


And here's the entrance to the shrine itself.


Inside the courtyard: a large tree!


And a wedding! There was totally a wedding going on in the shrine. I dunno, I wouldn't like to get married in front of gawking foreigner tourists like myself.


Here is some of the traditional shriney stuff.


Gorgeous architecture and pretty trees, the usual.


It depresses me a little that I'm almost starting to get jaded to this stuff. Same with earthquakes.


GROUP SHOT
In no particular order: Me, my friend Janna, and Janna's friends Stephanie and Aaron. With a bit of backtracking and some common sense, you should be able to figure out who is who. I interacted with a stranger in Japanese to get this photo taken!


Hey look, some more nature.


Janna is having a bright idea.


I would like this picture a lot more were it not for the traffic sign there. It's a lot brighter on film.


This is a museum!


Inside was portraits of every emperor in Japan, and a really awesome document chronicling the imperial family back into the age of myth, but I'll be damned if I could read it and they didn't allow photos inside.

That's enough Meiji. Time to head to Shibuya!


There was an Earth Day market! Was Earth Day last sunday? It's one of those holidays I can never keep track of.


This was my last adventure of the trip: The NHK Broadcasting Center! NHK, as I may or may not have mentioned before, is one of the huge megalithic TV broadcasting corporations in Japan, and they have a lot of cool stuff. I saw some of it!


In the front room there were loads of children waiting to get their picture taken with a MAGICAL ANIMAL MASCOT.

Unfortunately, the rest of the cool stuff was no-photo. I was a few feet away from some comedy variety show as it was airing LIVE on TV, which was pretty sweet.

Also, there was a 3D movie theater demonstration - with no glasses. You look at the screen, and it is 3D. Holy crap!

[Tech geek block BEGIN]
I have a pretty good idea of the trick they used here, even if I don't have the faintest idea how the underlying technology works. Basically, they took two camera recordings, spaced about as far apart as human eyes. Then, they had the screen projecting both at once, but you could only see one of the two images at a time, depending on what angle you were from the screen somehow. The trick: Which image you can see alternates every few inches. So, if you position your head right, a different image is hitting each eye. Hella cool.
[Tech geek block END]


Here is a picture of a statue.

OKAY that about wraps up that adventure. I am managing to survive my classes, spending more money than I'd like, and making a lot of friends. Today I learned how to make Japanese style Curry Rice!

Don't expect another post soon, I guess. I'll just keep going at this pace.


P.S. Regarding the title of this post: It is a bona fide Haiku that I was taught by my host father! It goes like this:

古池や
かわず飛び込む
水の音

Furu ikeya
Kawazu Tobikomu
Mizu no Oto

An old pond
A frog jumps in
The sound of water

It represents TRANQUILITY, see.

東京タワーがまだ倒れなかった

A number of places were visited in this past week and a half!

First was the Akihabara district of downtown Tokyo. Some know Akiba as one of the best places in Japan to buy electronics, like cameras or computers. Others know it as the Mecca of the geek universe.

I can't really describe Akihabara very well in a blog. It's kind of a surreal place. One of the first things I saw upon entering was a man in a business suit, with a horse head mask. Nobody seemed to find this out of places. There were a LOT of girls dressed as maids. The ones that weren't serving tea to people in insanely overpriced cafes were handing out pamphlets and coupons. I don't have any pictures, since most of the interesting stuff was 1) probably more interesting to me than it would be to most of you, and 2) indoors, where you aren't allowed to take pictures of it.

Next on the list was the heart of downtown Tokyo, this last weekend. The first place I went was a park right on the edge of the Imperial Palace grounds - as close as I could legally get to the palace itself.


That wall marks the edge of where the castle ended back in the Edo period, I think. Now it encompasses the kosher-to-go-into park area!



There was some kind of event going on. Lots of kids on bicycles. Don't know the details on that one, it didn't seem to be a race.


There was an endless expanse of perfect picnic spots! I wish I had brought lunch.


Awesome tree!


I wasn't the only tourist here, naturally. There's one of the few visible buildings on the actual Palace grounds.





Here's another one! Nijubashi bridge, the main entrance the grounds. I hear it's open one day out of the year!


This guy is Kusunoki Masahige, famous samurai from the 14th century. Fought for Emperor Go-Daigo to wrest Japan away from the Kamakura shogunate, then died in a hopeless battle of drama and samurai glory. He got a statue for it, and is also something like the patron saint of kamikaze pilots!



And now we have moved on to my next destination of this outing: Hibiya Park. Ain't it pretty?

However, not all was simple pretty trees in Hibiya park today. Something much more unexpected was going on:


OKTOBERFEST.
In Tokyo. I'm just as surprised as you are! I thought Oktoberfest was in October!

Not wanting to miss out on this opportunity, I had the pure, traditional Oktoberfest lunch of a massive frankfurter and a healthy serving of yakisoba. Just like the Germans do, right? Right?

Here it is from a distance, behind the classy clock sculpture. Bye, Oktoberfest!


Next on the list: NHK Broadcasting Museum!
NHK is a bit broadcasting company in Japan. Kind of like their equivalent of NBC or something.

The route I took to get there was kind of interesting, though. Lots of meandering catwalks through dense forest.
There are a lot of trees in downtown Tokyo.


Seriously, I felt like I was playing Myst.


Here we go! Old-timey stuff!


Giant animal mascots!


A cool room where you could play with cameras and stuff!


Bush and Kerry!

And next to the Museum was... wait for it...


Another shrine!
These things are friggin' everywhere!


It had these scary guys in it. They are probably Gods or something, but all I know for sure is that they mean business.

BUSINESS. Jesus. Look at that guy.

And with that, we have come to the last and possibly most iconic site of this particular adventure:

Tokyo Tower!


It's tall! Taller than the Eiffel Tower, just barely.


There is a gorgeous park near the base!


And once again, I find myself taking a plethora of photos from a really tall building. There are a lot of graveyards in Tokyo!

And a lot of trees!









Aaand that's enough pictures from me for today. To round it off, here's a video I took to try and convey Tokyo Tower's tallness:



In the week between these two trips downtown, I had JAPANESE MIDTERMS. Good gravy the last one was hard, but I pulled about an 85% on it, so that's pretty good. Especially considering that when I get back to the States, it just comes in as Pass or Fail.

I'm not sure what my next trip will be. I might not go anywhere CraaAAaazy this weekend, I've been doing that a lot lately. Two weeks from Saturday is the first real meet of my Field Work class - I'll be visiting an elementary school class along with some other exchange students, to do such exciting things as teaching them the names of colors in English.

Off I go!