Despite the last night last night, I was up early to run before the rain started. It was my first chance to see Sensouji in years, so I walked over to the temple to stretch before running.
This morning, it was my turn to drag Sumi out on a quest that was twofold. First, I'd been seeing a lot about the 3D billboards that they have in Shinjuku and Shibuya, and wanted to see them. Also, today is the release date for Final Fantasy 16, and there are ads on those billboards and elsewhere around the city that are pretty spectacular and will only run for a few days. So, we hopped a train to Shinjuku to see a giant 3D cat.
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| The wolf would stop by occasionally to shill for his new game |
It was pretty spectacular, really. I'll link to some videos of the billboards at the end of the post. There was also a trailer for FF16 that used the 3D capabilities of the billboard, but we didn't get a chance to see it. After seeing the cat, we headed down to Shibuya where there are two more of these billboards, one with a panda, and one with Hachiko, the famous dog.
The panda is on a smaller billboard a short ways from the station, and does some silly stuff with a fairly clueless expression on his face. Pretty accurate, to be honest. The dog, on the other had, only comes out at the top of every hour. The panda and cat were pretty much constant, so we weren't aware of this, so we spent quite a while waiting for him to show up. In the end, I was quite impressed with this tech. It's probably expensive, but I'd like to see it used more back in the states.
This afternoon we had tickets to see the world-renowned taiko group, Kodo, play in Asakusa with a few of our fellow taiko players from back home who are visiting relatives here. We met Manami and her daughter Maika and her son Taishi at the Asakusa Public Hall for Kodo's "Calling" tour, a collection of mostly new material we'd never heard before. No pictures or video, obviously, but they are always an impressive group to watch.
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| The Hibiki Crew |
Afterwards, we headed down to Kappabashi, a road famous for shops that sell a huge variety of cooking goods, from pots and pans to specialty knives to plastic food for restaurant displays. Manami-san is a very good cook, it is very much a hobby of hers, so this was like Sumi going to Hobby Off and browsing through all the little character goods they have there. Needless to say, an hour later she had a bag full of new cooking toys and we were off to find some food. We opted for dinner at a local restaurant, Mizuguchi. Because there were 5 of us, we were seated upstairs in the traditional family dining section.
The menu was varied, and geared towards fish, as is usually the case. The real Japanese people had tune sashimi, dabs, and mackerel while the foreign tourists had vegetable itami (basically stir fried veggies and rice) and chicken fried rice. A few things about our meal (which was good, by the way). First, Sumi ordered the vegetable itami. I have in the past also ordered vegetable itami. And it always seems to come with some random, unadvertised, non-vegetable. In this case, it was pork. My chicken fried rice was advertised as having....well, look for yourselves:
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| Yes, that reads "Tomato Ketchup Flavor" |
And that 100% is exactly what it was. Chicken, rice, and ketchup. It tasted better than it sounds. We also shared some potato croquette, a popular appetizer in Japan. It's always a bit weird seeing people you know in one context in another. It's like when a student sees me outside of the classroom or a patient sees Sumi in the grocery store. Seeing people that live just a few miles from us halfway around the world is a weird feeling. Modern travel really has made this a small world.
After saying our goodbyes, it was back to the hotel through the rain that had finally started falling, with a brief 7-11 stop for breakfast food for tomorrow and ice cream bars for dessert. Tomorrow we're heading up to Saitama to go Taiko shopping!
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| Tokyo Beerzilla? |
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| Sumi finally bought her own personal fan |
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