Embedded Files
We had friends visiting from Canada! While they were here Jesse took the 2 weeks off, and we did a lot of travelling. We did so much it's going to have to be multiple posts, so this one covers the things we did once everyone arrived and our first few days in Tokyo before we travelled to other cities.
In Tokyo to begin
Meiji Jingu
Sammi arrived before the others, so she and I hung out for the day. We got some okonomiyaki, and then we visited Meiji Jingu, a lovely shrine within a large green space, dedicated to Emperor Meiji and his wife. As we walked through the trees, I realized it was the first time I had been under a full canopy since leaving Canada. The weather was lovely, and it was a great place to walk around and chat. We also went through a second inner garden, a space favoured by the Empress. It had a small pond, tea room, a well, and lots of plants that weren't currently in bloom. The downside to the end of summer is everything is scorched and feels like it's hanging on for dear life, but now that it's finally cooling off, greenery is bouncing back and the trees are changing colours too.
Jesse and I had a chance to practice our Japanese as well! See, Sammi did an impressive job organizing and planning, and a couple of the reservations needed a phone number. It was agreed she could use Jesse's Japanese number.
So when a restaurant actually called he and I were left scrambling. The first call was a complete fail, we were too surprised to respond correctly. But after googling the restaurant and confirming the details with Sammi, we planned out a few sentences, looked up some vocabulary and called them back. See we were a group of 5, but the restaurant only had space for 4 per table. So Sammi had made two reservations with two names, but they had noticed the common phone number and called to confirm they didn't have space for 5 all together.
The seating was fine but when confirming the details Sammi accidentally gave us the wrong date, so we played a quick game of 20 questions to figure out what the date was. Is it tomorrow? No. Is it Friday? No, Tuesday. Is it the number 13? No. Is it the number 20? Yes! (Why not just ask the date directly? Well, Japanese days of the month technically follow a pattern but there are lots of exceptions* and we didn't remember all of them in the moment).
After successfully confirming the date and time with the restaurant, it turned out all was fine, just a miscommunication on our end. And the food turned out to be quite good too!
---
*In English we have the words first, second, and third, that don't derive directly from the numbers one, two and three so you have to memorize them. But the rest 4th, 5th, 6th, etc. follow an easy pattern that connects to the number.
In Japanese the number 1 is "ichi" but the first of the month is "tsuitachi", and the number 2 is "ni" but the second of the month is "futsuka". Out of 31 days in a month, 14 of the names are either unintuitive or an exception so you have to memorize them.
National Museum of Emerging Science
While still in Tokyo we visited the National Museum of Emerging Science. It was an interesting museum, although it was fairly new and there were spaces still without exhibits.
I liked the giant globe they had, covered in screens. It played a really interesting video about the evolution of life on earth from the formation of amino acids, to RNA and DNA in single celled organisms, all the way through the dinosaurs to the animals we know today. And then the current state of the physical and digital world. Thankfully there were English subtitles for the soundtrack, and the visuals were really good.
There was also an interesting recreational rocket convention that happened to be there the day we visited. There were clubs from universities and other organizations that were showing off their systems. Some were neat shapes, others had mupliple stages. We all wished we could speak enough Japanese to ask questions, but we had to make do with just looking.
I liked the space section too. There was astronaut food, of course catered to Japanese tastes. Curry, mackerel with starch thickened juice so they don't float away and make a mess, and of course rice were all featured. There were a number of signatures on a recreated ISS portion too. I couldn't find Chris Hadfield since I guess he hasn't visited, but I did find his crewmate Roman Romanenko.
There were also a couple cool "artsy" exhibitions focused on modern technologies. Three specifically stood out:
Showing the power of AI the transform images
A physical demonstration of the size of capacitors (basic building block in Computers). They have an hour glass that looks like it is filled with sand, but it is actually these microscopic capacitors. There was a camera magnifying it and displaying on a screen.
A "Robot Colony" that interacts with each other. When they are hit with a color of light, they turn into that color. There's also sounds and such going off that they send to each other. Kinda neat to just observe.
A single picture wasn't good enough for these, had to make videos.
Capacitor Hourglass
Cat-Shifting
Unicorn Gundam
After the Museum, we saw this cool Gundam thing in the distance. Turns out, it's a fully mechatronic Gundam with moving pieces and everything! We made it just in time to see the last "show" of the day where it changed positions.
Ghibli Museum
We also visited the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo. You are not allowed to take photos inside which on the one hand I understand because it often prevents you from completely immersing yourself in the experience in front of you. However, when there is NO English (except for "no entry" signs, those were all multilingual) it's rather frustrating to be forbidden from using your phone.
As positives, there was a very cute animation that was custom made for the museum. It featured only a couple of words, so language wasn't a barrier.
My favourite part of the museum is this thing on the right. It's a large spinning series of dioramas, probably over a meter in diameter. The easiest to explain are likely the bats at the top. It's the same bat, but the wings are in a different position each time. If you took a picture of each bat and played the pictures back quickly, you would see an animated loop of the bat flying, flapping it's wings. It's the same for each series of dioramas, together they create an animation loop of kids skipping, or Totoro bouncing, or the cat-bus running.
It spins very quickly, with a strobe light flashing on it. When you choose one spot to watch, the timing of the strobe means your brain doesn't see the next diorama moving into position because that happens in the dark, you just see one diorama after the other very quickly. It looks like the 3D dioramas are alive and moving in front of your eyes.
This video features the same idea of a series of dioramas all spinning by quickly to form an animation loop, but without the strobe light so there's no flashing.
Fishing supper
For supper Sammi found quite the experience for us. It's a restaurant where you can literally fish for your supper! There are tanks around the restaurant and you get a rod and some bait, and whatever you catch is cooked as you request (they have a list of preparations to choose from). You can order a fish directly (in that case a member of staff puts on hip waders and gets your request), but the main fun is the fishing. Jesse and Sammi both had success! Although a lot of bait was lost to fish eating it directly off the hook or flopping off the hook before a net was grabbed. Overall if you want a quality fish supper, I don't think this is the place, but it sure was an experience!
Golden Gai
After our Fishing Supper, we were looking for something to do. Friends wanted a night out drinking, and we were near the entertainment district (Shinjuku), so we decided that tonight was the night. Marlena isn't a big drinker, so she bowed out for the evening.
Our first stop was an Izakaya, to top up on food and get some cheap drinks. Nice little place, but nothing too noteworthy. Once we felt suitably prepared, we headed over to "Golden Gai", a series of alleys filled with 200+ mini bars, each being able to sit 6-10 people only.
As we arrived, we were definitely overwhelmed with choices. Luckily, Sammi heard voices upstairs in a random staircase, so we headed up there. These were the narrowest, steepest stairs that I had ever seen! Definitely not something built for inebriated people, but I guess that led to some of the charm.
Inside, we were happily greeted by the bartender "Masa-san". Through the evening, we found out that he only bartends there 2 days a week, and also MCs various other ceremonies (Including some Japanese broadcasting for the Olympics!). There was also another group in the bar from New York, here for a Banking Conference.
Masa-san was great, prepping novel drinks for Adnan and I throughout the next couple hours, and we were chatting away a ton. Superb experience, and I recommend seeing him on Sunday or Tuesdays in Golden Gai. Don't ask me which bar it was though, I don't remember lol.
After 5-6 custom drinks, we decided to try our luck at another bar, just see what the scene was like. It was already past 1am by this point, so we had missed our last Subway home and would have to take a taxi.
As we left Masa's place, another group entered, and we wished them a good time.
Our next place wasn't anywhere near as exciting. We entered right as others were leaving, and only one guy remained. Turns out he was another coder, so that was neat. But the overall vibe here wasn't as exciting, and he left pretty quickly.
Before we left, Adnan and I spotted a bottle of "Snake Sake" on the bar counter. In our drunken state, that sounded like a fantastic thing, so we both got a shot. Once we downed it, we both turned to each other and shrugged: "Just tastes like alcohol". It wasn't until we left that we commented "Do you feel unusually warm?".
The next morning we both still felt drunk, so we looked into what Snake Sake does to you. Turns out it shuts off the liver for a little bit, letting alcohol accumulate in your blood. That might help explain why we just felt "off" the next day. After a couple days we were back to normal though, so no permanent harm. We both agreed that we wouldn't be having Snake Sake ever again.
After one more relaxing day in Tokyo where we did laundry and other such daily chores (and Jesse and Adnan recovered from snake sake), we prepared for an early morning to visit Kinosaki Onsen!
Next Post: Moving to Sendai
Google Sites
Report abuse