Rainy season finally arrives in Tokyo

"He's got to make his own mistakes
And learn to mend the mess he makes
He's old enough to know what's right
But young enough not to choose it
He's noble enough to win the world
But weak enough to lose it"

So, the good news is, the rain held off for our entire cycling trip, and the weather was beautiful, if a bit hot. Well, the rains have come to Japan. An inch today, a possible two inches tonight and another inch tomorrow for Tokyo. For us, that just meant we brought an umbrella and didn't go walking in parks.

We started the day by visiting Taikokan, the taiko drum museum in Asakusa, about a mile or so from our hotel. We'd been there before, but this time actually knew something about taiko and were able to look around the store and understand what we were seeing. Upstairs, we were the only visitors at 10AM on a rainy Friday, so we took advantage of the quiet by banging on lots of drums!

Hundreds of drums from around the world

Many of them you can play!

Even this enormous daihiraoodaiko 

Ceremonial Chinese drum set

Sumi was so embarrassed about making such a huge sound

I was too. It was so resonant, you barely had to tap it to fill the room

I feel sorry for the poor attendant in the other room.
Can you imagine a middle school field trip in here?

Afterwards, we hopped on the Yamanote line to the other side of town and my annual pilgrimage to Rasoi!

In the station, new ultra high tech vending machines with touchscreen and animated beverages.
These weren't here last year.

Their signature salad with wasabi sesame dressing 

And heaven! The curry is so good, you could eat it as a soup. The naan is not
too oily, but soft and chewy. 

After enjoying some of the best food in the world, we grabbed another train to Ikebukuro and went for a walk in Sunshine City. It was really starting to rain, at this point, and we were glad most of the way was underground. We stopped at the Sanrio store and the Ghibli store in the very appropriately-named section called "Moe Garden"

Pronounced "Mow-ay", no direct translation to English, but "cute beyond belief"
gives a general idea.

We didn't really buy anything, as most of the things we would have liked we had no way to take back with us, but enjoyed the window-shopping. On our way back, we saw the performance area was buzzing. In Atre, a section of Sunshine City, there is a stage on the first floor that they hold some form of performance on a weekly, and often daily, basis. We've seen idol groups, children's song performers, once there was a hands-on crafts demonstration. This month they are celebrating Okinawan culture in the mall, and so all the performances were Okinawan. Today was a guitar and wooden box duo.

OK, he also had a cymbal and wind chimes.

They played some apparently well-known Okinawan songs, and were good. The songs were rather basic and, at times, silly, but the crowd was clapping along, singing along and when the singer missed a few words, laughed and pointed at him. It was all in fun, and a good time.

After watching them for a while, Sumi went on her pilgrimage to Tokyu Hands. They really do have useful stuff, as well as silly things. I stocked up on notebook paper, replaced my wonderful pencil that I lost near the end of the semester and got eraser refills. I am totally the life of the party. Sumi raided the stationary and cute section. That's probably not what it's called, but that's what I call it.

Finally, we headed back towards the station, stopping at a Book Off on the way and scoring some more cheap books and a not-so-cheap taiko DVD. When we got to Ueno, we checked out one of our old favorites, the Wired Cafe, to see what was new on their ever-changing menu. They had brought back their parfaits!

Its a good thing we don't live in Tokyo, we'd weigh 300 pounds.

 We decided to walk back to the hotel from Ueno Station, as we had done that many times when we last stayed in Asakusa, and it was a nice way to relax after a meal. Of course, it wasn't pouring the last time we made the walk. We took mostly back streets, thanks to the security of good GPS on our phone, and got to see more of Tokyo that we hadn't seen before, which was nice.

Getting back to the hotel only a little wet, we checked out the new pile of swag we had obtained.

I did not expect to find all of these for less than $5 each!

Hello Kitty, taiko and Hello Kitty playing a taiko. Sumi was in heaven! 

Sumi stationary and little stickers that you put on your iPhone/iPad start button
to make it not concave. Apparently this is a thing that out of touch people like us
had never seen, until our rental phone had one.

Instructional books for taiko and shinobue.
And a used DVD of Kõdõ, a famous taiko group.

I think I had said in my last blog entry that we were done buying stuff for ourselves. Yeah, I lied. But we're really done now. We can't fit anything else in our bags!

Tomorrow, we're off to Kansai to see Himeji castle, if it's not raining too much, and then meet up with a friend who was one of our first Japanese teachers, Suzuki Junko-san in Nishinomiya!

楽しみ！