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View of a Buddhist Shrine inside Inokashira Park (Benzaiten Shrine)
Natsu Matsuri
A "Natsu Matsuri" is a Japanese Summer Festival. Marlena and I have passed a few this summer, where there are small floats and festivities where people are carrying shrines. They usually coincide with major holidays, but don't need to! In this case, the co-working space I go to was holding one for tenants. There was going to be food, drinks, and childhood games!
So after my working hours, Marlena met me at the co-working space and the party was underway. It started off slowly, but after an hour or two, it has picked up steam and there were a lot more people around. They had a food truck outside with traditional Japanese festival foods: Yakisoba, Kakigori, Strawberry desserts, and other small fried snacks.
My strawberry dessert I got from the Food Truck
One of the games was a traditional Japanese children's game involving a small pool. There were two types of "minigames":
Goldfish Scooping: Using a small paper scooper ("poi"), try and scoop swimming goldfish into a cup held slightly above the water. You try and scoop as many goldfish as possible before your "poi" breaks (due to getting too wet from the water).
For the game here, there were small floating bouncy balls instead of goldfish. Much easier to bring home!Water Balloon YoYo: Small water balloons are partially filled with water, so that they still float on the surface but are bouncy. They are tied shut with an elastic that has a loop in it. You have a small string made of paper and a hook on the end. The goal is to hook the elastic and lift the balloon out of the water before the paper breaks.
Eventually we got called inside to play some group games. The first game was pin the tail on the Donkey, a classic game that we know in North America. This one isn't a Japanese game, but the host for the evening grew up in Australia, so she introduced this game to all of the Japanese locals that were present. Marlena and I didn't get a tail to place, but all the people who did place tails seemed to have a good time!
Next up was a good game of Limbo. I made it a bit further than Marlena, but had to tap out well before some of the others at the event. The lowest height that someone went was easily below my waist, it was crazy1
Finally, there was a drinking game. For this game, it is the first person to finish a bottle of "Ramune" soda, and flip it upside down on their head to prove it is empty. This glass bottle has a special design. Instead of a cap or lid, it is sealed from the inside with a glass marble. The neck tapers out quickly, and then back in. So to open the drink, you bop the marble into the bottle, and it doesn't sink to the bottom because of the neck tapering back in.
Once the ball is in the neck, you can start drinking. But the issue is, the ball will fall back into the mouth of the bottle and prevent anything from coming out. So the bottle designers have put two little dimples on the inside of the neck, where the ball can get caught. So in order to drink quickly, you need to tilt at the right angle to get the marble stuck in the dimples. Difficult to explain!
Either way, I played the drinking game against 3 other competitors, and won! I got a "Blink" hat (name of the co-working space), along with a gift card for the cafe that is there (which I frequent often).
Inokashira Adventure
It was a nice day on Sunday, so I decided to go on a bit of a longer bike ride. There aren't many good bike trails in Tokyo, but I was able to find one that goes along a river/canal through the city. It was about 10km away, and then a further 10km of trail. So a bit of a journey.
At the end was a decently sized park! There was a shrine, a mini zoo, and a good size central pond. The pond had a good amount of wildlife around, a bunch of ducks, some other strange birds, and schools of fish that were visible near the surface.
I spent a while touring the park and surrounding areas, just enjoying being in the nature. Very relaxing, and with no bugs out, it was a pleasant walk. Definitely not a tourist destination, but a nice place to visit to get out of the monotony of daily life.
I got a bit lost on the way back, and ended up in a very touristy shopping street. Harajuku Takeshita Street. If I didn't have my bike with me, would have defineitly toured around more. I'll be heading back there at some point to explore more!
Takeshita Street in Harajuku
Tokyo Dome Roller Skating
Monday was a holiday in Canada, so I had the day off. Leads to the perfect situation of being able to tour a popular destination with there being fewer people since everybody in Japan would be going about their normal days!
Marlena and I decided to check out Tokyo Dome City. There's a baseball stadium there, along with a few roller coasters (one even goes through a building!) and various shopping/entertainment places. It's a neat tourist attraction.
However, we didn't expect it to be as empty as it was. There was almost nobody there, and it looked like the rides weren't even running! It might be because there was rain expected that day, or because it just isn't busy enough to run roller coasters. So we'll have to come back another time to do the rides.
Instead we went to a facility in Tokyo Dome City and went Roller Skating! Both Marlena and I had never been before, and she saw the signs and thought it would be neat. We had a 2 hour block, but only stuck around for maybe 80 minutes. Lots of fun, highly recommend!
I was a bit awkward on the skates, but managed alright.
Marlena got comfortable on the skates pretty quickly.
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