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A Festival that Marlena and I stumbled upon completely by chance!
Honestly, not much interesting has been happening. Marlena wrapped up school and is looking into the next adventure, and my work has been crazy! There's also been a bit of planning in preparation for friends to visit on October 7th - 22nd!
In the meantime though, there were a few small things that happened that I want to share.
A Local Festival
While Marlena and I were wandering through the neighborhood exploring new areas, we started hearing some drums playing. This isn't fully unusual during the day in some areas, because temples/shrines will occasionally bang drums. But in this case, it was late at night (7pm, already dark by then) and coming from between busy sections of town.
Well, after a bit of trying to locate the sound that is bouncing off all the buildings, we stumbled across a small festivity! There were a couple stalls, but the main feature was a drummer in the center with a group of people dancing in a circle around her! It was pretty incredible to see people of all ages joining in and doing the exact same sequence of movements.
The choreography wasn't just something simple either, it looked to be about a minute straight of rhythmic foot, hand, and body movements. Not something that can be picked up after just a couple rotations seeing it. And the moves changed when the songs changed too! There were 3 or 4 songs that we stuck around for.
My best guess is that this was a form of "Taiko Drumming". Wikipedia. This wasn't a special day across Tokyo, but must have been special to the community. Fun to witness such a wholesome gathering of people. I was able to grab a quick video to show all of you
After watching for a while, we eventually departed. The next place we stumbled across was a Taiyaki place, which is something I've been wanting to try! It is a pancake-like pastry shaped like a fish, with filling. In this case, the filling was Red Bean Paste and Cream Cheese! It sounds like a strange combination, but the Red Bean Paste is very sweet and it all combined together well. Delicious!
Delicious Taiyaki, just waiting for somebody to eat it!
A New Restaurant
It was my turn to decide on supper, and there was a new area that I saw with restaurants that we hadn't been to before. The place we ended up choosing was a Soba Dipping Noodle restaurant!
So how it works is that you choose a noodle thickness (ranging from spaghetti-like to some very wide+flat noodles), then a noodle quantity. After that, you select a few different soups/broths that will go along with the noodles. Marlena and I each ordered two broths, one cold and one hot each. Unfortunately, I don't remember exactly what they were, but they were all very tasty!
Once everything is prepared and served, you eat it by taking some noodles with your chopsticks and dipping them into your broth of choice before eating it. It's fairly labor intensive and slow since you only get a few noodles per grab, so I'd recommend doing it with a large group of people so you can continue chatting away while you eat. A very good social food.
A side of Amberjack Sashimi that we ordered, also very tasty!
We also stopped for some Taiyaki again :)
Visiting the Tokyo National Museum
Marlena and I hadn't been doing anything interesting recently, so I decided to take some time off during the day at work to go to a Museum with her. On the docket was a fairly large museum in the Ueno area of Tokyo, which is a rather popular area due to a massive park that they have there along with various museums and a Zoo.
The vast majority of this museum was a History museum, showcasing artifacts from various points in Japanese history dating as far back as possible. There were also some sections on history from other cultures based off artificats that were in the possession of various Japanese nobles and ended up being donated to the Museum.
All-in-all, it was a rather boring museum. It seemed like the focus of the museum was to just state facts rather than explaining the history and the importance. A lot of "Here is this pot, fired using this method", and "Here are some bronze mirrors likely from China, showcasing the good diplomacy at the time". Lots of surface level information. I guess if you like old pottery, it would be pretty interesting.
There's a game that Marlena has been playing recently called: Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom. It's a game made by Nintendo, which is a Japanese video game company. In the museum, we found some interesting similarities between old things and what appears in the Game!
Some designs found on an ancient sword (1000s of years old).
Glyph from Tears of the Kingdom
Old Japanese Beads
"Secret Stone" from Tears of the Kingdom granting Magical Powers
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