Smorgasbord

Hey all! Long time no see! Wow, do I have a lot to tell you guys. My ski trip went pretty well, as I will detail below, I was very tired for about 4 days there but I seem to be fully recovered right now (though my butt is still too sore to do sit-ups. Insert random 'pain in the ass' wisecrack here). The first thing I want to do, though, is complete the chronicle of my Tokyo trip with Brigg, as started in my last real post.

So. We left off at the Meiji Jingu shrine, a masterpiece of its type. Here are some more details of it.

This is inside the main temple complex, looking at the main temple itself. There is a big courtyard in the center of the complex, about 100 yards square. It takes a while to get across on the best of days, but today, since it was raining, the pristine marble of the courtyard became a slipping hazard. Hydroplaning in boots is not fun.

This was the ornate entrance to the main temple complex. I thought it was pretty cool. Just a note - some temples have really elaborate carvings under the eaves of their temples, and some of these have been colonized by birds, which causes damage and unsightly staining. So to prevent that from happening, the temples put a really fine wire mesh over the carvings THAT YOU CAN BARELY SEE THROUGH. So the end result is that we basically have to believe that there is some very historic carvings under this wire mesh. I wonder how many people take photos of the wire.

After the trip to Meiji Jingu, we hit Harajuku. I had never been there, and didn't really know what to expect - it's basically the biggest "high-fashion" area of Tokyo, and it's where all the goths and Lolita fashion enthusiasts come out to play. For those who have not heard of Lolita, here's the Wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita_fashion

Since it was raining and cold, I think the enthusiasm wasn't there for the street fashion fanatics that day. Brigg and I went people-watching on the main street, and did see a couple of noteworthy outfits (didn't take pics, I forget why. Maybe I didn't want to risk water damage. Sorry), but it was not the fashion show I had anticipated. Meh. There were some interesting shops, though. Also, behind the big Gap store, there was a Mexican restraunt. This was one of the highlights of the trip. It wasn't great, but they did a fairly decent nachos, and if you know how often I eat nachos in America and can imagine how hard it is to find Mexican food in Japan, you'll know how much that meant. We even had a couple of Dos Equises (Dos Equies? Dos Equii?) there. Not too shabby.

The next stop that day was Akihabara - I shouldn't need to describe it. Those who would care about such things already know of its grandeur, and those who don't know of it probably wouldn't care anyway. It's basically an electronics lover's paradise. And an Epileptic's nightmare.

Here's me among the goodness.

Day 2, we started out by hitting some of the bigger shopping districts. This is the main intersection in Shibuya, which was congested as usual and pretty cool. It was fun to people-watch here. As you can see, people pile up ten or so deep on the corners waiting for the lights to change, and then all the traffic clears and the pedestrian lights all go at once, and it's just a sea of people across the entire intersection. During one of these mass crossings, we noticed a group of gaijin doing something interesting - there were four guys, and they split up so that two were on each opposite corner of the intersection. Then, one got on another's shoulders in each pair just before the light turned, and they surfed the sea of people toward each other, high-fived in the middle, and continued on to the opposite corners. Looked pretty goofy, but it must have been cool to do. If you've ever seen "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," this is also the intersection where two street racers drifted into the middle of a huge crowd, and the crowd just parted to let the cars come barrelling through. Until you see the crowd in person, you can't really appreciate just how improbable that is. The buildings on all sides of this square also had huge TV screens, there must have been about 10 visible. I'm amazed they don't get many car accidents with all the distractions.

This is the main drag in Ginza, another big, fashionable shopping district. That's Brigg in the foreground.

The next stop of the day was the Kabuki-za, to catch our first Kabuki show ever! It was pretty cool, there were two performances that we saw. The first was four dances, to compliment the four seasons of the year. Apparently, that's a traditional theme for just after new year's, when we were there. I liked the Summer dance the best - it had three men in kimono that looked like sparrow's wings and one man who looked like a samurai retainer, dancing in front of a screen with bamboo designs, and there was a story about how the samurai was wandering among the bamboo and watching the sparrows in flight among the bamboo. Some of the motions looked just like sparrows, it was great! The second performance was an actual play, about some criminal courtiers from Kyoto who have been exiled on a deserted island for many years, and how they are rescued. I won't go into the whole plot, that would take an hour. There were some pretty interesting prop and stage effects, and the acting was great in the Kabuki style. It all would have been incomprehensible without the English translation headset, a steal at 500 yen. Best 500 yen I spent all trip.

This is the entrance to the Kabuki-za.

I stopped to take this picture as we were crossing the street. Probably illegal, but I thought it was worth it. I just wanted to illustrate how dramatic the Kabuki-za looks against its surroundings. You're driving along a major metropolitan street, and suddenly there's this ancient castle-shrine-theater thing! It definitely causes a double-take.

The group in front of the theater. That's Brigg's girlfriend, Tomami, on the left. She'd joined us by this point. The stacks on the left side of the theater entrance are barrels of sake. I think they're lucky for the new year or something. I wondered if they were actually full.

The last thing we did on the trip was go about an hour and a half out of our way to check out an Ellegarden show (punk rock band) that turned out to be sold out. Kind of a cruddy way to end the trip, but the rest of it more than made up for that little disappointment.

Well, chronicling this stuff took longer than I had anticipated. I'm going to bed. I'll post more tomorrow about my ski trip and everything, I promise!