We spent the weekend with Bill and Pam in Tokyo. Saturday was a fairly straightforward day seeing some Tokyo sights, like the Meiji Shrine and Ueno park. But first Bill needed a replacement suitcase, so we dived into a Don Quixote near the hotel. It was first thing in the morning, so not as crazy as my previous experience, but just to give you a taste…
The Meiji Shrine was impressive but honestly not that memorable, except for the enormous torī gates at the entrance to the grounds. It was built about a hundred years ago to look imperial. It is, admittedly, an important Shinto shrine.
Here we are with The Mob in the shrine’s main plaza. I liked the two trees that were trimmed to look like one giant tree. We saw a wedding procession come through and then spied in an outer building more couples getting ready. They can host up to a couple of dozen weddings over an auspicious weekend.
The nearby gardens were nice enough but fairly plain. We moved on to a shopping area near Nippori station, walking the small streets back to Ueno park. We stopped to get an ice cream cone in a little alley that had a shrine at the end. It was good manners to finish the cone in the alley before going back out into the street. There are loads of shrines of various flavors in the district north of Ueno.
The cherry blossoms were a little past peak in Ueno park but it was still good for people watching. There was a guy out walking his meerkat. I wonder what a meerkat is like as a pet in a small Tokyo apartment.
There were still picnic parties happening. I’ve heard that people arrive before sunrise to stake out a spot under the cherry trees.
On the whole I think I was off my game on Saturday. Tokyo takes a certain frame of mind, and it’s a big city turn from slower paced Kyushu. It’s crowded, chaotic, and you’re constantly making quick micro decisions in novel situations with incomplete info (Where should I stand? Which way to walk? Are they talking to me?). It happens, some days while traveling are more memorable than others.
On Sunday Michele and Ryoko had their lesson with Suzuki sensei. Like our last trip two years ago I took the opportunity to rip around Tokyo looking and buying pottery. Pam tagged along, while Bill went looking for book stores. We started at the Mingei-kan, the former house of art collector Soetsu Yanagi (no photos allowed). Then the rain started, so I wasn’t taking many pictures.
I did buy some nice pots though. We went to Utsuwa Party (not my style), Utsuwa Marukaku (good, got two pots), Daimonji (vintage, not my thing), Utsuwa Hanada (great, got two pots), tiny 2nd floor U Luck (unexpectedly great, got another pot), and finally Tsumikusa back in Kichijoji (good, but nothing grabbed me).
I also saw this multi level Doggy Island hospital.
By the way, the walking district north of the train station in Kichijōji is super interesting, lots of great restaurants and stores. Here for example is a second hand outdoor gear store next to a frog store. I also bought some “craft soy milk” from a shop with gleaming soy milk machinery in the window. It was good, it had a nice beany taste.
Michele and Ryoko had a good class with sensei and were relieved to be past it. Sensei had to move his lesson location from Kichijoji because neighbors were complaining about the noise. The new spot is in a shrine near Asagaya station, a short train ride away. Michele’s lessons were for dancing, so were fairly quiet. Then a woman at the shrine heard Ryoko playing the taiko and asked to sit in! So Ryoko had a small audience to add to the pressure of playing for sensei.
We relaxed at an izakaya that evening with taiko friends Chie and Yuko, who we hosted last year at our house in Carlsbad. Here’s Michele and Ryoko looking remarkably fresh and enjoying a treat after 4.5 hours of lessons.
Ken Chin-Purcell 