Museums and Parfaits - Ueno and Shibuya

It's Sunday already! Only six days left!

Since Monday is the day that all the museums and such close, we decided to head out to the Nation Museum in Ueno today. They are holding a special exhibit of several hundred pieces from the Palace Museum in Beijing. Having seen the Palace Museum in Taiwan, I was looking forward to it. First, we took a stroll through Ueno Park for the first time since arriving.

Toshogu, a shrine for Ieyasu Tokugawa, first Shogun of the Tokugawa

A small Buddhist temple. There used to be a much larger temple with a Daibutsu (large statue of Buddha), but it was destroyed in the Boshin Civil War in 1868.

Two things of interest here: A real miko (A shrine maiden. Young women who work at the temple. Anime otaku go nuts for that kind of thing for some reason) and the temple in the background...is fake. It's just a cloth backdrop. Why? I don't know.

  After our walk, we headed to the National museum. Ueno Park houses many museums, including the National Science Museum

the Museum of Western Art

the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art

and so on. When we arrived at the National Museum, we got our tickets and were informed it would be a 40 minute wait to get into the special exhibit. We figured it just wasn't being opened to us yet. We didn't realize

that half of Tokyo was also going to the exhibit this morning

 We had to line up outside for close to an hour before being allowed in.

The Sky Tree. People around us were commenting about it, as well.

Once we were in, it was very crowded. It took use quite a while to get through the exhibit (close to two hours) mostly due to the incredibly slow pace most museum-goers were shuffling. I happen to enjoy taking my time at museums, reading the information and viewing most, if not all, of the exhibits, much to Sumi's dismay. These people were trying, I think, to glean some heretoforth unknown pearl of wisdom from a cracked three thousand year old stone pot. I've never seen such lack of motion. The exhibit was very interesting, however. Wonderful paintings and artifacts. Some scrolls that spanned over 100 feet with a single, continuous painting, in great detail, of an emperor's visit to a town. Well worth the trip and even the excruciating pace.

After escaping the special exhibit, we spent another hour at the main hall looking at the permanent exhibits before being all museumed out. It was two o'clock, and lunch was calling. After wandering through the station a bit, we decided to try a gyoza restaurant I had heard of from YUI's and Hishashi Kondo's blogs, called Oushou (the king piece in shougi, Japanese chess). We located one down the street and dug in

Gyoza, prok fried rice, ramen and pickled vegetables

The gyoza was as good as they said it was. Excellent with good sauce and not very greasy. The rest, not so much. Not bad, by any means, but no flavor. The ramen had spaghetti noodles and bean sprouts (?). Well, they only commented on the gyoza in their blogs, and I see why. Still, it was filling and worth the trip. I'd definitely return for a gyoza bento (10 gyoza and rice).

After the mediocre food, we needed some good dessert. Sumi's favorite cafe, The Wired Cafe, had changed their menu, and with it removed her favorite parfait . This was a serious problem that needed resolving. I wanted to visit Tower Records in Shibuya anyway, so we hopped the train to the opposite end of the city in search of some YUI albums I had been waiting to buy until we got here (one saves a lot of money on shipping if one is already in Japan) and a good parfait to ease her loss. Tower Records was a big success. I scored two limited edition CD+DVD sets, including her new album and Sumi bought what looks like a terrible collection of remixed older songs with a thumping beat perfect for running called Tokyo Marathon Music 002, implying both that there was already a 001 and that they are planning on 999 of them. Wonderful.

The search for the perfect parfait proved to be a bit more challenging. Shibuya is a mess of non-parallel streets, neon (now a lot of LCD screens), shops and people.

Trying to look at all the plastic food and menus while dodging the traffic was difficult, and it seemed no one had a parfait. There were many desserts, some that looked like fruit and whipped cream on top of a loaf of white bread. After almost twenty minutes of searching up and down the back streets of Shibuya I thought I had a good shop. It was called Strawberry Jam, and have a sign with strawberries adorning it and the word "sweet" in Japanese (amai). Unfortunately, there was also a sign saying "$75 per hour". Probably not the parfait we were looking for.

In yet another moment of irony (this trip has had it's share), we finally found the plastic parfait we had been scouring Shibuya for! In a chain family restaurant called Cafe Gusto, with what looks like a million locations in the Tokyo Metro area, including one about six buildings down from our hotel...and here we are on the polar opposite side of town, searching for half an hour. Ah, well, getting there is half the adventure, right?

There were no complaints

Cafe Gusto also sported a nice Drink Bar. In the States, many fast food places have a self-serve soda fountain, You buy a soda and can refill all you want. In Japan, they improve on this idea. You buy the Drink Bar, which gives you a tiny glass that you can refill with any drink at the bar, which includes soda, juice, tea, coffee and cocoa. So if you are the kind of person who likes juice or tea with your meal and a cup of coffee afterwards, you only need to buy the Drink Bar, and you are all set.

Full and happy, we took the long train ride back to Asakusa (about 35 minutes) then walked back through teh temple grounds, where people were tearing down all the stalls and tents that had been set up for the last week. Apparently there had been some festival going on, which explained the number of people. It was quieter than it had been all week, and was quite peaceful.

Tomorrow being Monday, I'm not sure what we'll be able to do, as much of the tourist things close down. We'll see what happens. For sure, though, the best Indian food in Tokyo is waiting for us in Meguro.

Meiji, Harajuku, Ikebukuro...hut! hut!

Our goal today was to head out to Meiji shrine, the largest most important Shinto shrine in the city (dedicated to the emperor Meiji and his wife), in the morning for a walk in the woods and a quick stop in the temple area, then stop in Harajuku at KiddyLand for Sumi to get her Hello Kitty fix, which is, ironically, essentially across the street from the shrine area, and maybe head up to Ikebukuro for some sukiyaki. That was the plan.

We got up and out at a good hour, and after a quick breakfast at Andersen Bakery (a Dutch bakery chain in Japan) in Ueno station, we took the train to Meiji. Even in the "dead" of winter, it is still green and beautiful. It was also surprisingly busy.

sun-dappled entrance gate

The lanterns with blue writing are all ads. They are purchased by the sponsors of whatever matsuri(festival) is going on

It turns out it was busy because there was an event going on. What event, we're not sure, but we were very lucky to get out early on a Saturday morning. There was a large display of ice sculptures in the middle of the temple grounds!

Even as early as we were, it was over 40 and the sculptures were just beginning to melt, especially those catching the sunlight. They were quite detailed and the themes varied from Buddhist statues to mermaids to centaurs to fish. Quite a pleasant surprise!

The temple was also very crowded. Apparently there was some important ceremony happening today because there was a lot of security, which there never is normally, and lots of expensive cars kept coming and going. This is place where important national figures get married and such, so it was probably something along those lines. There were also a lot of late O-Shougatsu visitors, making their first visit to a shrine a few weeks after New Years.

Last gate heading into the shrine. The hangings at the top resemble a huge dart set. The hangings to the left and right of the entrance are large versions of Ema (wooden plaques) that visitors write their wishes for the new year on.

I love the architecture of these shrines

Visitors filling out their more normal-sized ema

And of course buying Omikuji (fortunes)

Sake in rice barrels offered to the temple.

And wine casks on the other side. It's good to be a Shinto shrine!

After buying some of our favorite sesame sweets at the gift shop (they are only sold here at Meiji), we headed across the street to Harajuku, home of teen and pre-teen fashion in Tokyo. Also home to some of the best store names in the city. Unfortunately, the one store we were searching for, Kiddy Land, is moving to a larger space in Harajuku, and was closed until the summer. Ah, well. No Hello Kitty for Sumi. We did find some cool stores, though.

The store is called "Harajuku Chicago Thrift Stoar" (yes, they have it misspelled in neon). They must have been to a section of Chicago I've never seen, with whales and palm trees.

Beauty Food for Urban Sweety...of course

AND fun....it is seriously a condom and sweets shop...with wireless internet...

We circled around the back of Harajuku mostly for a walk, and ran across a museum we hadn't heard of before

Ukiyo-e Ota Memorial Museum of Art

It was a small museum filled with Ukiyo-e, a popular form of art from the Edo period, usually depicting landscapes, scenes from kabuki or literature or history or pleasure quarters of the time. I personally like them for the details of Edo lifestyle they show. No pictures, as usual, but it was our second pleasant surprise of the day. Very well done with many good pieces.

A little further on, we encountered a tiny street that would not have been out of place in Europe, filled with hair salons of all kinds. A hair salon shopping district, if you will. We didn't see pricing, but I'm willing to bet a trim would run you $75 easy, judging from the decor.

When was the last time you saw something advertising "No Women"? And check out the hairstyle on the guy...

Heading back to the station, after a few more interesting signs, we took the train back to Ikebukuro and to Sunshine City for some good sukiyaki at a bargain price (still $10 for a full meal!)

They really do know how to market this dreck, don't they?

Takeshita St. - The gateway to some of the most questionable fashion in the world

After a closer inspection, it's a PSA for intestinal cancer screening

sukiyaki lunch set!

While in the mall, we saw people setting up for a performance. Apparently another idol group, 9Nine, will be performing at 2:30! Oh joy! Checking our phone, we see there's thirty minutes before their show, so we decide to take in the whole Ikebukuro experience, and set out for some crepes before the free "concert"

The Japanese know how to do crepes. Chocolate, banana, custard, whipped cream and ice cream.

I'll leave you with a little clip from the concert that we weren't supposed to film, but everyone was filming anyway. I actually had a guy come up and ask me to stop filming. It was rather ironic, as 1) I was just taking pictures, not filming, which we were allowed to do, though it wasn't worth arguing, especially because I was done and 2) EVERYONE was filming with their iPhones, but since they didn't look like video cameras, they were being ignored. Sumi was right next to me filming and they said nothing to her :) They are, in my opinion after seeing about three minutes of their show, far better than AKB48 in terms of choreography and performance. Which, by the Inverse Talent Success Music Performance Metric, means they will never be as popular. The crowd was pretty into it, though.

Searching Asakusa for Drums and...Plastic Food?

Today we decided to stay close to the hotel and spend our time checking out Asakusa, an area known for it's enormous, ancient Sensouji Temple (built 648AD) food service shopping district (more on that in a minute) and, most recently, the Sky Tree (aka the New Tokyo Tower), the tallest structure in Japan, though it is not set to open until next month.

After a very brief コンビニ (convenience store) breakfast, we walked outside to Sensouji, quite convenient, as it is directly behind our hotel. The last two times we were here, Sensouji was undergoing restoration, so we weren't even able to catch a glimpse of the main gate, Kaminarimon. But this morning was cold, but bright and cheerful...and crowded!

All the gold trim literally gleams in the sunlight

...LOTS of sunlight

Newly restored gilded lanterns. They are about 12 feet tall.

A view looking down the bustling Nakamise (inner store), which is the ancient market road that leads up to the temple.

 Nakamise has all sorts of stall and shops, making food and snacks right in front of you. We bought some amazing mochi (rice flour) sweets and fresh senbei (sesame rice crackers) to enhance our pizza bread from 7-11 (breakfast of champions!), then had to escape the crowd. We walked a short way down the main busy street in Asakusa towards Orange Street, which is an old road filled with vintage shops, cafes, restaurants and what have you.

Sign reads "Orange Douri(Street)"

A prime example of "what have you". Magurobito translates, literally, to Tuna People.

We continued towards the train station in search of something Sumi had wanted to see for years, the Taiko Drum Museum. It is not a museum like you would expect. First of all, it's on the fourth floor of a Shinto Goods and Taiko store. Second, the entrance looks like this:

Hm. The store itself was pretty fascinating, with all sorts of things needed for Shinto ceremonies, processions and such. And some very elaborate, very pretty and very expensive handmade taiko drums.

taiko drum sticks in all sizes

Did you ever wonder where Japanese parade floats came from? Me, too!

This one sells for just over $24,000

The museum was very small, but very cool for three reasons.

1) they had drums from all over the world on display
2) Even though pictures were not allowed in the museum, the nice curator offered to take a mug shot of us with one of the more impressive displays

The best I could make out, these are Chinese festival drums representing a dragon and the sun.

3) You actually got to PLAY almost all of the drums! They had sticks out and everything. And we're not talking about a few little snare drums. Big, five foot deep taiko drums, water drums from Papau New Guinea, kalimbas from Africa. We were so nervous about it, we only hit them softly. It was so quiet in there, we felt rather odd banging on big drums, but it was VERY cool.

A little ways down the road from the drum museum is a shopping district that specializes in food service. Japan has all sorts of "shopping districts", which are really just clusters of shops specializing in the needs of a certain profession. For example, Tsukiji has the Fish Market and tons of little sushi shops and goods needed to cook and prepare fish. Here in Asakusa, this is where one goes if one owns a restaurant and needs things for it. Shops for signs, display cases, to-go boxes, dishes, foodstuffs (spices, canned and dried goods, etc). Anything you need for a restaurant, you can buy it on these two blocks.

Plates, bowls, serving dishes...

To-go containers and uniforms...

Many stores were simply little warehouses you could browse. I could barely squeeze down some of these aisles.

Lucky Turtle? The mascot for a knife shop...Kacchan.

Who said tacky was out of style?

And, of course, if you are a Japanese restaurant, you need to buy.....plastic food

I always wondered where they came from!

They even have the bizarre pizza with clams on it...

They are called "Sample Shops", and many restaurants in Japan use these plastic foods to show prospective diners what they serve. There were several grades of "samples", including some rather expensive handmade ones that looks very realistic. You normally aren't allowed to take pictures of goods in shops, so I had to be rather sneaky about these. The guy at the expensive shop kept staring at the big Gaijin, so I couldn't get any pics. sorry.

Apparently, you can also outfit your own brewery from this street

or mad scientist lab, I'm not sure...

Now starving after having stared at fake food for the last hour, we headed back towards the temple area, where we wanted to try out Sansada, a tempura restaurant that has been here in Asakusa since the 1850's. It had obviously been remodeled since then, but still had an old fashioned feel to it. The food?

The smile says it all!

Actually, it's funny because the tempura really was good, but there was one piece that all but ruined the meal for us. The mushrooms, spinach and especially onions were very tasty, but there was this flower they put in there, battered and deep fried and larger than the vegetables. I still don't know if I liked it or not, but the flavor was SO strong, that it literally overpowered the meal. If you've ever eaten flowers before (which is not unusual in Asian cuisine), you know that they taste like a smell, if that makes sense. This tasted like distilled essence of a flower. Gum, toothpaste, chocolate and soda could not remove the taste from my mouth even hours later.

One thing we noticed while wandering Asakusa is that the Sky Tree really has started to dominate the skyline. When we were last in Asakusa, it wasn't anywhere near completed, so we never saw it. But now, it's a landmark that can be seen clearly from all around, which is saying something in a city full of tall buildings. With the old Toyko Tower damaged from the tsunami-inducing earthquake back in the spring, the Sky Tree promises to be the new kitschy tourist spot as well as a nice way to figure out which way is east when you are in the city.

Several miles away, it is still impressive

Next up: Meiji Temple and Harajuku!