Tuesdays in Tokyo!

Tuesday - June 11, 2013

June through mid-July is rainy season for most of Japan.  We've been lucky so far.  We've had wonderful weather.  Today the rains came and the umbrellas were on display while we toured through Tokyo.  And back with us to lead us in the adventure was our wonderful tour guide, Sho. 

We spent the first part of our day in the Asakusa area of Tokyo which is home to a famous Buddhist temple called Senso-ji.  It's Tokyo's oldest temple site and many consider it the most important in Tokyo. During World War II, the Asakusa area of Tokyo was firebombed very heavily by the US.  Much of the temple burned down but it was rebuilt.  The site has been utilized for temples since 645A.D.

It's an impressive area.  There are other significant in this particular square including a Shinto shrine and a five-story pagoda.  There are also numerous vendors selling various wares.  People want to see this place and there is definitely money to be made here.  Apparently vendors have sold wares here since the 18th century.

The main gate to the area.

The walkway up to the main temple.  Over 90 vendors in less than 250 meters.

Getting closer to the temple.

Another beautiful building on the grounds.

Inside the main temple.

 After we visited the area we went to a nearby restaurant for lunch.  Now I believe the story was that the restaurant we ate is the oldest tempura restaurant in Tokyo.  Needless to say, after my positive tempura experiences thus far, I enjoyed the meal very much. 

Underneath that blue lid is all sorts of good food!

Next up on our adventure was a trip to a glass-blower.  I really like the fact that someone at Technos thinks that a bunch of adult faculty will enjoy doing these arts and crafts sessions... because we LOVE IT!  This glassblower guy was amazing.  He guided us all as we blew our own glass ball to use as a wind chime.  First though, he had me try to blow a glass ball without his help.  I failed over and over.  He was using me as a demo to show how hard it is.  He said it takes years to master just the blowing aspect of glassblowing.  Then, just for fun, in about 45 seconds he made a beautiful glass swan, which he then shattered in front of us!  hahaha

After we blew our glass balls we went upstairs and painted them and turned them into wind chimes

Loved this guy!  One of my absolute favorite people that I met on the trip.

Temples, food, wind chimes... it was a great day so far.  Next stop... the Edo Tokyo Museum.  The main feature of this museum is its displays on the Edo period in Tokyo.  I suppose we got a taste of this at Edo Wonderland but now here was a bit of a more...ehhh...scholarly experience with the Edo period.  The main floor is really impressive with some huge recreations of structures and some wonderful displays.  The Edo period lasts from 1603-1868 but the museum also had displays on more modern Japanese history.  There was material concerning theatre which certainly sparked my interest but the thing that most struck me were the displays on World War II. 

Many of us know about the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Japan during WWII but I didn't really know about the firebombing of Tokyo.  It was very intense.  And to stand there in the museum looking at these displays next to citizens of Japan was a strange and, truthfully, uncomfortable experience.  I suppose that when you are in your own country, things are most often delivered in such a way as to make you appear like the "good guy."  Here, in this section of the museum, I was getting a very different experience.

There was plenty of fun to be had at this museum too.  Sho, Yuji, and I got some good pictures together.  This gem is worth posting again...

These two are awesome.

Yuji makes me earn my tempura!

There was also a special art exhibit on the lower floor that I kind of stumbled onto.  It was a collect of Edo period paintings from the Robert Feinberg collection.  Feinberg started collecting Edo period paintings in the 1970's and has amassed a beautiful collection.  It was the first time this collection had been shared in the Japan.

I kind of assumed we were heading home after this but we had one more stop... the Tokyo Skytree!  The Skytree opened in 2012 and is the world's tallest free-standing tower and the second tallest structure in the world.  This thing is huge.  I just keep looking at it thinking it was a building out of a Star Wars movie.  It's 2080 feet tall.  That's just a touch under four tenths of a mile!  We didn't take the elevators up the tower but we took a few pictures and grabbed a snack at one of the many shops there.  I had a very interesting crepe with a red bean paste that was wonderful.

That tower is BIG!!!!!

We seem to always head back to the hotel during Tokyo rush hour and our trip home took a long while.  When I got to the hotel, I had to rush right out because I was meeting a friend of a friend in Shinjuku for dinner.  A friend of mine recently spent a month in Tokyo performing in a show and the production had their own translator.  My friend and the translator remained friends so when my friend heard I'd be in Tokyo, she said I needed to meet the translator.

So I was on the train heading back to Shinjuku where I would try to meet someone I had never seen before in the world's busiest subway station.  Ummm yeah....   Through the magic of cellphones we managed to find each other rather easily.  Her name was Rie and she had already scouted out a place for us to have dinner.  It was really nice getting to spend a couple of hours talking with Rie.  I was able to ask her a lot of questions and she was able to clarify a few things for me about Japan.  Plus, I keep saying this but, my favorite part about the trip isn't the temples or the food or the museums... it's the people.  So dinner with Rie was definitely a highlight of the trip so far.

Facebook + Cellphones = Dinner with a friend of a friend in Tokyo!

After dinner it was back to the hotel.  My day of seeing the sights in Tokyo was amazing... Temples, tempura, shopping, glassblowing, museums, Skytree, and dinner... all in one day.  One thing that is great about this trip is that, were I to try to plan all that myself, it would probably take me three days to do it all.  But, because we have such great people navigating the trip for us, we can see so many things in such a relatively short time.  It's really wonderful.  I'm really blessed to get to do this.

And I get to do it again tomorrow.