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nostromo in hello-kitty land, day 4

on day 04 i met Kaze_, a tokyo citizen i met on IRC years ago.
we planned to visit several traditional sights like gardens,
shrines, and temples. so we wanted to meet at 09:00 in the
morning, and i left the hotel right in time so i could have the
usual breakfast at McDonald's and then drive for about 45mins
to "meiji-jingumae" metro station. but to get there i need a
ticket. so i thought i go to the ticket sales point as everyday
to get my "tokyo furii kippu" (tokyo round tour ticket, valid
on all toei buses/subways/streetcars, tokyo metro lines, and
JR trains). but the ticket counter opens at 09:00 so i had a
problem. i picked a guy in a suit and briefcase, like there are
so many in the morning, and asked him for help. lucky me, he
spoke at least a very little english. so he typed some buttons
at the nearby ticket vending machine but could not find the type
of ticket i wanted to have. he managed to get some assistant by
a JR ("Japan Railway Company") employee, but this one was not
able to press his way through on the buttons to my desired
ticket. so he opened the ticket counter and sold it to me
directly, without the machine. this procedure took me about 20
mins (and the poor guy in the suit too!). so i was late at the
meeting point, but Kaze_ was still there. lucky me again! we
decided to go to "yoyogi park" first, then to "hanazono-jinja
temple", "TMG" ("tokyo metropolitan government"), to "joenji
temple", and finally to the shinjuko ward. 

and so we started our tour at "yoyogi park"[001-042] at the
"meiji jingu shrine"[001-035]. afterwards we were walking
through the park and saw a martial arts club, where they were
doing archery. but it looked more like meditation than just
shooting arrows[038-039].

if picture [043] confuses you the same way it did confuse me,
here's the explanation i got from Kaze_ why it's cubic metres
instead of square metres: this no parking sign is for an area
where there's an subsurface cistern with water for the fire-
brigade to extinguish fire. and thus it's cubic metres.

the daily cat can be found at [044-045]. this cat was obviously
waiting for the door to be opened since it totally ignored us and
kept staring at the glass-door. on the door it said "open from
12:00 to 23:00", and right after i had taken this picture (at
12:38) the shop-owner returned and opened the shop and the door,
and the cat ran inside. i'm sure the poor cat was waiting for 38
mins that someone opens the door.

Kaze_ was hungry. and though i am still not hungry due to the
high temperature during the day and my tiredness in the evening,
we decided to go for lunch. the menu was in japanese only, but
this time i had a perfect translator. so i ordered "hiyashi
gomadare udon"[049]. sounds great and means cold udon - those
are the thick noodles - with sauce and sesame. it was delicious
but way too much for me. it cost 700YEN (that's about 4.15EUR).

next stop was "hanazono-jinja shrine"[050-058], a shrine
surrounded by sky scrapers, yet a beautiful place to take a
short rest from the noise and bustle outside. at a shrine one
can usually pray and make a wish to one (of many) god. to do
so, one washes hands and mouth, steps up to the shrine, throws
a coin into the shrine, bows two times, prays and tells the
god the wishes, and finally claps twice (or rings a bell, if
available) to wake up the god and get his/her attention.
afterwards bowing, and you're done. i joined Kaze_ and told some
(to me unknown) god my wish. let's see if my clapping really woke
him up...

we went on to the "TMG"[059-070] which has two observatories,
one on the south- and one on the north-side. each one is
accessible by an elevator. we visited both observatories.

to get to our next stop, we had to go two the "shinjuku
ward"[071-076] (which is one of 23 wards in tokyo, comparable
to the 23 districts in vienna).

when we arrived at "joenji temple"[077-079] a caucasian priest
welcomed us and asked us to not put pictures of the temple
aniline since they received some terrorist threats lately. there-
fore i put only the pictures of the temple from the outside
on-line (i guess terrorists will get no more information from my
pics if they drive by the temple). the priest told us he's from
america, his parents were danish, and he's a priest in japan.
remark: ok, maybe he made this all up and gave me a combination
of countries that is uniquely told to each visitor, so that he
can google if someone has put some pictures on-line and finally
match the hits with the according visitor. if so, be assured:
no, i did not put any pictures from the inside of the temple
on-line.

after another walk through "shinjuku ward"[080-082] we arrived
"tokyu hands"[083], another huge shopping mall. we wanted to see
the pets section, but there was only stuff for dogs - too bad.
Kaze_ had to leave, but i stayed a little longer in the mall.
afterwards i took the JR train to "akihabara" station and wanted
to change to a metro line train. but the metro line station was
a different station, since JR and tokyo metro line are two
different companies. on my way to finding the other station i
entered "electric street"[089-097], a street full of electronic
stores. i also found a comic shop named "comic toranoana"[093] in
which i spent about half an hour looking at various comics. and
finally in a "yodobashi" store i found a vendor machine as shown
HERE, which contained those toys as shown in [097]. what i got
is shown in [098] - cool, a cute cat-girl! maybe i buy another
one of this series if i find such a machine again.

on my way back from JR station "minami-senju" to the hotel i was
shopping in a supermarket and bought a box with 12 maki pieces
for about 1.76EUR. yammi, they were delicious! another funny
thing happened at this store: i wanted to get some soya sauce
for my maki and grabbed a bottle that looked like soya sauce to
me. of course everything on the bottle was in japanese. so i
asked a young woman if this is soya sauce. as she said "soya"
i'm sure she knew what i was looking for. but then she read the
ingredients list. still she was unsure so she asked an old man
standing next to us. he also read the ingredients list and
finally nodded at her. so i asked myself 'do japanese not know
their own written language?'.

daily random tokyo facts: there are no dustbins in the city -
for empty plastic bottles there's a collection unit at every
vending machine that sells plastic bottles. yet, the city is
extremely clean, people avoid throwing garbage on the street.
furthermore they don't hesitate to keep it clean, as a group of
japanese people were cleaning the floor of the train after one
of them had spilled some liquids. earthquakes are really common
here (see http://www.tenki.jp/qua/index.html for current in-
formation or a history of earthquakes for the last seven days).
people don't make phone calls on the train. people are really
helpful (remember the guy wasting 20mins to help me with my
ticket?). "temple" is for buddhism, "shrine" is for shintoism.

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