Tokyo & Home

The next day I spent in Tokyo, Natalie and I went to Monzen-Nakacho, Akihabara, Ueno and I honestly forget where else. What I do remember were my feet hurting a lot, and that I was hungry but I had a hard time agreeing on foods with my travel buddy.

Monzen-Nakacho was a cute place. It gave off more of an older charm to me. We went there in search of a festival, but found we'd missed it by a day or two. But there were still a few booths left. We went in the temple anyway. I heard a priest or somesuch giving a talk about Obon and history.

Interestingly enough, you're not supposed to take pictures inside the temple. (in korea, it's okay to. very different.)

I did kind of sneak one though. It's people about to pray after lighting incense at the altar. You buy a stick of incense for a few dollars and light it "in the hopes that blahblahblah" listens to you. Oh, I remember thinking the statue in this shrine was different from ones I've seen. This one was holding a sword and something else... I forget. Man. I should have written it down. 

This was another shrine. It was right nextdoor to the other. They tend to come in pairs? This one was the kind where you go up, clap 3 times and ring a bell.

View leaving the temples. These were leftover booths.

A variety of plastic masks you could buy.

They had these things on display. I don't know the word for them - but they're those things you see them carrying in the middle of a parade during a festival.

From Monzen-Nakacho we got back on the metro and rode to... I guess it was Akihabara. I saw a river and wanted to look for kappa. Natalie didn't know what a kappa was, so I had to tell her the gory bits. Baha. But she didn't really fancy staying in one spot for long, so I didn't see one.

Kappa-less river.

This one was also kappa-less.

Walking.

 Fashionable guys.

They just looked cool. I wish I was the direct kind of person and had just asked them for a photo. But I'm not. 

There are a lot of maid cafes in Akihabara. Sadly these places have a cover charge, as well as a spending minimum if you're going to go in one. I didn't really have the money to spend on something like that. Japan is expensive. 

After Akihabara, we went to Ueno Park. Ueno has been around since there were emperors in Japan, in fact the park was part of the imperial estate. I was a bit disappointed to find out I'm the only person I know who associates pandas with Ueno (zoo). 

This is the lotus pond in Ueno Park. It's full of these huge lotuses! I think the buds were as big as my fist, the leaves broader than both my hands opened wide.

 big old fish

The path in the lotus pond leads to a temple. 

From there we went back up the hill and found these performers.

There were lots of big, old trees and these huge fearless crows. 

 He was trying to hand feed the pidgeons, and she was trying to snap a picture of it.

A lot of the streets we went down looked like this - narrow, filled with shops' stuff and packed with people. Natalie likes it best this way. She ended up liking Ueno a lot - because it had a lot of the small packed streets. I liked Ueno for the park, its peace, and the history that I knew about it. 

I was beat beyond words that day. The next day it was a relief to be going home. The shinkansen has air con, the trains' insides have air con, the airport has air con, and all of these places have seats. :D My feet needed it. I took my time going back to Nagoya, and spent about 2 or 3 hours in the airport. It was nice to sit and read, and just be surrounded by a language I understood. 

I must say, I did miss speaking Korean. It is very strange to go from one place where you've been hearing and speaking one thing, and going to another where you already understand what's being said around you. The one you've been accustomed to using comes out, or blocks some of what you knew before. For me, having those Korean roommates was sweet - because I could go back to using something my brain had created a set for. Perhaps it's because the newness and "most used"ness of the neural pathways, but to me as a person it just felt... familiar. It was such a strange disconnect. Two alien homes.

Sitting in the airport to leave was bittersweet. It was good to go "home" and odd that I thought of it as home. I understand enough Korean to get by, but I understand enough Japanese to understand and create meaningful conversations. Therein lies the difference. 

Oh yeah. I got back to Seoul and stayed the night at Jongsoo's aunts' house. The next day we got delicious salad at this cool cafe and J and I went to a huge Kyobo where I bought Japanese import cds for 1/3 of what I paid in Japan. Sadness! Oh well. Lesson learned!