nostromo in hello-kitty land, day 2
yesterday was a little catastrophe. as written in my bLog i planned to go to odaiba. but no sleep for 24 hours and the hot, humid climate kept me from this trip. i was walking for about ten minutes, and then gave up and returned to my hotel. the lady at the reception was a little confused, since i asked here how to get there and a few minutes later i returned again. i explained to her and she was smiling - hehe, stupid tourists. so, instead i went to bed, tried to sleep, got up at 20:00 again, stayed awake a few more hours, and finally went to bed again. next morning i felt much better. but, before i went to bed, i took two photos out of the ninth floor of the hotel. see them here. i will refer to the pictures taken on day 02 via "[X]", where "X" is the number of the picture. unfortunately the timestamps of the JPEG pictures are messed up. i forgot to adjust the time on my camera. when i'm back from this holiday i will fix it. well, first quest on day 2: get a breakfast in tokyo. i was hoping good old McDonald's[003] had nearly the same products as it has in austria. well, i have no idea if it has since i could not read the signs. but the pictures of the various burgers looked familiar to me. lukcy me, McDonald's has coffee and some bakery-stuff, like a chocolate-croissant. this was my breakfast, it was good. i changed my plans, and instead of going to odaiba i went to roppongi. in the night it's an amusement district and during the day it's a big shopping area. but on my way to the metro i found a little temple, called "ekoine temple"[004-009]. 45 mins later i arrived at roppongi hills[013-102], visiting "mori tower", with a height of 270m. inside the tower is "sky view"[018-037], the "sky deck"[038-050] on the roof top of the tower, and the "sky aquarium"[054-067]. a guard told me that i was not allowed to take photos inside "sky aquarium". well, but i took a few ones. next to "mori tower" is "mori park"[077- 088], and next to the tower and the park is "tv asahi"[089-100], which was celebrating it's 50th anniversary (at least i think so, according to the few english words that were written in the building), with loads of interactive games for visitors on the groundfloor. all flashy, all colourful, all manga style. after a one and a half hour long walk i arrived at "aoyama cemetary"[104-123], where i met the first two cats in tokyo - they were resting on gravestones. another 20 mins by foot later i arrived at "nogi jinja"[125-136] shrine. a japanese at the entrance, who could talk a little english, told me there was a wedding[127-128] going on, and four more would be starting this day later on. 30 mins later i arrived at "tokyo midtown"[137-144], another huge shopping mall. i visited the "fujifilm square museum"[140], showing all kind of photographs and a history of fuji, including analogue photography, video and the chemistry branch of fuji. the entrance was free, but no photography inside the museum. it took me another 15 mins by foot to get to the next shrine, called "hikawa jinja shrine"[147-180]. a really beautiful shrine. those temples, shrines, and gardens are a pretty hard contrast to the "outside" world. within the area it is so quiet and beautiful. but i must add, that tokyo is actually not a "loud" city (at least not on the weekend). at "hikawa ninja shrine" i spotted another cat[179-180], of course again resting on a stone (don't know what it is for actually). on my way back to the metro station i saw this... i think it was a contest(?) of traditional japanese dancing[181-187]. it was nice to watch, especially the drumming girls[181]. last station of this day trip was "arisugawanomiya memorial park"[188-217]. this is what a traditional japanese garden should look like (at least as far as i know them from tv). again this park is a contrast to the surrounding area. though this time it was really loud in the park, since there were so many crickets. it really gets dark early here in japan. at about 20:00 there's not much sunlight left, and taking pictures was getting harder, as with all the trees it was even darker. enjoy the pictures - but in real life this was so much better. ah, right, and my fourth cat of the day[188] - meow. afterwards i went home, and had a long shower. i'm tired now and will go to bed. i think i will go to odaiba tomorrow. but before, a little update on stereotypes: americans can be found at "starbucks". even old people (60++) read manga. some taxi drivers have suits and gloves. many people have gloves and masks, and i'm still unsure if this is to protect themselves or the others. japanese are really friendly - the guard at "sky aquarium" was really really friendly and from his acting i thought he was the one doing something wrong. i apologized since i really did not know it was not allowed (though later i saw the little sign at the entrance to the aquarium).
writebacks...
Tina wrote
hallo
hallo nostromo! grüße aus österreich. erinnert mich sehr an meinen tokyo-besuch! viel spaß noch und: don't get lost! lg tina
SpoLi wrote
mnemoniac
how do you keep all these fancy strange names like "hikawa jinja shrine" or "arisugawanomiya memorial park"? you cheat and take notes, don't you?
nostromo wrote
Re: mnemoniac
i take english information brochures if available. so i cheat and take brochures, yep ;)
trackback
TrackBack ping me at: http://nostromo.joeh.org/cgi-bin/blog.cgi/blog_200807202359_tokyo_day02.trackback
comment...