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.
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