July 1st (Day 5)

The day before the wedding

This morning I woke up to A knocking on my door. He wanted to get into the room to pick up a purse for M who had to catch the 7am train. She had a four hour ride to go pick up H and bring him back for the wedding. He was in a hospital going through physical rehabilitation and we were a little worried he would have trouble with the trains. Mieko seemed more harried than usual and I guess she was under a lot of stress entertaining and feeding us and trying to get things prepared for the wedding before leaving for an 8+ hour train ride to pick up H.

The city where M lives is called Nagaiyama (meaning flowing mountain) in the Chiba prefecture. Also, if you're trying to pick up some japanese try to use this one in daily conversation!:

O shiri = sir buttock

Akira mentioned he never got his drivers license in Japan and that the process takes a lot of training and costs $2000. Also, before you can buy a car you have to show proof you have the space to park it.

We heated noodles for breakfast and after discovering the fireworks bag already had a hole in it, we opened it up to look at what we had. There were mostly sparklers of various types, no firecrackers, and only one package of a spinning things that fly into the air. It was raining hard that morning but cleared up by the time we left the house.

An octopus sparkler

"6-shot horse shoe" This is supposed to shoot only 6 shots.

We packed up and set out for the Buddhist temple at Asakusa. The temple is located in an old portion of Tokyo where the streets are even narrower and the buildings are more crammed together. There was a chaos of bikes, cars, and pedestrians in the road. The area is also a tourist attraction and we saw many Americans other and foreigners. All the Americans were fat and in fact, now that I think back to all the foreigners we saw during our visit, pretty much all the Americans were fat - I wonder if there's an underlying reason overweight people go to japan...

They have grabbing mechanisms available if you drop something onto the track accidentally The dragon was a mural at the Asakusa station

Some of the freeways we saw were elevated and mostly enclosed with wall to cut down sound.

Courtesy seats for old people, injured people, and people that eat kids

Entering old town tokyo

The temple Asakusa

Scattered throughout the temple grounds were many wooden boxes with slat tops you were expected to throw your money into before making a prayer. It would rattle down bouncing off the slats. Instead of having a single location where you would concentrate your prayers, there were specialized gods scattered all over the grounds. There was a god for luck in love, business, getting promotions, and etc. Each god had a statue or some sort of marker and many had their own wooden slat box.

Buddhas for raising children There was something about tying aprons around rocks. We saw this a lot

Akira told us you get good luck or something if you wash the statue This woman was really going at it

Also scattered around (but typically in front of the large temple buildings) were large pots filled with ash and smoking incense. They had vending machines or, in other locations, free sticks of incense available to burn. The incense wasn't strong enough to tell if it had a smell but it did produce smoke. People would gather around these pots and wave the smoke over their body for good luck.

In addition to incense, inside the temple buildings you could buy candles to put into some sort of rotating candle box. You could also purchase fortunes on bamboo sticks, pieces of paper, or wooden paddles, and tie them to a rack of horizontal metal bars when they were bad.

Everything in the temple was covered with mesh netting to keep the birds from roosting and pooping all over the sacredness. There were coy ponds in most temple areas and this one was no exception. It had signs posted telling you not to let your dog pee on the stone columns or swim in the ponds. Next to the large temple was a communal drinking fountain that looked pretty cool although unsanitary.

This backward swastika is called "manji" and is the cartographic symbol of temples. Manji and swastika form a pair and signify the beginning and the end (don't know which is which). Swastika is supposed to be a Sanskrit word (phrase) "sva stiha".

The strip mall

Across the square and opposite the large temple was a very long strip of tourist shops selling 'Japanese' memorabilia and snacks. Shamara bought several souvenirs but I opted for just a small cup of overpriced iced green tea (for 100 yen). I was told stories that it's against the law to drink in public or while walking. When M visited America she deliberately bought a drink so she could stroll around and sip it (and reportedly didn't have the necessary coordination for it.)

The Sensoji Nakamise (strip mall) stretched for as far as the eye could see (through the crowds)

Making bean paste sweets

"Senbei" (rice crackers)

Fat American

Wondering if I could get through customs...

"Thunder Gate". Thunder god on left, wind god on right

After running the tourist gauntlet we walked back through the streets taking a different path to the train station. Along the way we checked out a china shop, saw a small indoor soccer field and wandered into an arcade. The arcade wasn't that large or impressive with the exception of a series of games I had never seen before. They consisted of a flat board surrounded by the normal controls. Players could purchase playing cards from vending machines in the building which represented units in your army. You could place these cards (up to 3?) on the flat board in the center of the machine and slide them around on the table. The units on the screen (the same as on the cards) would then go through these maneuvers in the game. This had the effect of greatly simplifying the tactical maneuvers typical with games like Medieval Total War while retaining the capability for flanking, blocking, and rushing. The game stations were together in groups of 10 or more machines so each player would be controlling a battalion within a larger global context. It looked really interesting.

Note the dispensor of the videogame playing cards, /Irate nerd in bad lighting/

There were all sorts of heavily populated side avenues filled with shops. Rickshaw driver trying to justify the $30/10min price by explaining it's pulling the cart over speedbumps

Mieko's heartthrob and a funky bike

This was a shop specializing in selling whale meat!

Going back to Electric Town

We still had time to spare after arriving at the station so we revisited the electronics district. We were greeted as before by young girls dressed as maids, tennis players, and gothic dolls handing out pamphlets, tissues, and fans. Other groups of girls wearing matching jumpsuits were shouting through microphones to get the crowds attention. Though I suspect it's related to the Japanese excess of service industry workers, we would often see girls just standing outside a store asking everyone who walked by to come inside.

We wandered through a few stores then turned into the narrow passages that ran underneath the block. These hallways were packed with small shops selling discrete electronic components and small consumer electronics. One booth may deal entirely with transformers of all sizes and another capacitors. Akira said they're willing to haggle. It was like scene from star wars or ghost in the shell. I passed a small booth filled with vacuum tubes. The booths were so cramped the merchants barely had room to sit. I really wanted to get a picture but the hallway was so narrow and the light so dim it would have required me to stand a few feet away and use a flash. I doubt they would have appreciated the attention.

If I had a few days to explore I'm certain I could find enough parts to build just about anything. I wish I had more time and that I could speak the language. I would max out my credit card and terrorize Tokyo with a giant robot that falls down a lot.

I bought a cheap pocket watch because my wristwatch was really uncomfortable and found a desk clock that shows localtime, Universal Time, a timer, and the current temperature depending on which side is down. We also visited a bookstore where I purchased a Japanese - English dictionary and spent a long time looking really hard at the other childrens books concerning insects.

They put a book cover on my dictionary when I bought it and I kept it with me constantly from that point - carrying it in in the pockets of my cargo shorts. It was handy for looking up words and phrases, taking notes, and storing tickets and small pamphlets.

Meeting Mieko and travelling to the wedding hotel

At 3pm we caught the train back to M's house and found she was already back. Mieko, A, and H then spent 3 hours in a frenzy trying to get all the luggage packed for the wedding. We learned A was supposed to be at the hotel at 4:00 to be fitted for a tux. We didn't leave the house (in two taxis) until 6:30. The taxis took us to a train station with a line that went more directly to the hotel.

The train took us completely through Tokyo to the coast. Along the way we passed disneyland. The speakers in the train used normally to announce station names and play little tunes to get the passengers attention played a disney tune when we pulled into the station. The disney monorail connects directly to the train station. From the train it also looked like the park was larger than the one in southern california and they were doing a bunch of construction as we went by.

The hotel is located in a heavily developed area filled with large modern buildings. It commands a view of Tokyo proper and is surrounded by buildings with strange experimental architecture. We walked in from the station (shaped like a giant domed tent), past a courtyard filled with flashing tiles set into the concrete and a panasonic building whose entire side was an enormous television screen. The Washington hotel was large and I felt a little under dressed entering it wearing my manky shorts and stinking with sweat.

The completely clear train map for the JR line

We all had different rooms so we agreed to meet on the 21st floor to eat dinner at a certain time before retiring to our rooms. On arriving, I met M's younger sister (whom I recognized from several of the pictures in the house) and several of A's cousins and their families. Mieko's sister seemed very talkative and excited to see me. She also knew very little english. Typically she would talk for a long time to me and I would have to turn to others for a translation. Also, it seemed regardless of who she was talking to, if I turned to her (she sat behind me) she would instantly continue with here focus on me. I became very careful when turning around.

The dinner, apart from probably being heart-stoppingly expensive, was very good. It was a meal like the ones I had during my last visit to japan with around six courses in all sorts of tiny ceramic bowls. Shamara refused to try anything and M started to go out of her way to order her food without fish. She tried to do the same for me but I complained as they were taking my japanese plates and bowls away. She seemed very surprised I could use chopsticks and enjoyed fish. Shamara had been ruining my Japanese experience by proxy. I tried a little champagne but couldn't stand the beer and turned down the sake. The meal courses;

Pork tempura + salad
Mucus cup, cucumber, and beans
Slabs of fish, eggplant, and cucumber that you cook yourself using

a personal small sterno grill
A piece of tempura'd fish of some sort and an entire tempura crab

(about the size of my fist) cut in half.
Rice with eel and some crunchy deep red vegetables.
Raspberry sherbet and green tea.

The view from the window where we sat was fantastic. It was dark and the entire skyline was filled by lit up skyscrapers. I hadn't brought my camera because I didn't know how acceptable it would be to have at dinner and I regretted it.

Mucus cup

Akira's cousin Kenji Akira's cousin Yuichiro the doctor in Nara. In the background is Yuichiro and Kenji's mother Chizuko. She just had a operation to remove colon cancer.

My hotel room was very small and worked a little different from others I've seen. The keycard used to open the door had to be placed in a receptacle in the wall to power up the air conditioning and lights in the room. The toilet was not the most complex Japanese toilet I've ever seen but it did loudly run water at random intervals when you were sitting down. The sound of the suddenly running water in a silent room was very startling; which was just as well considering where I was sitting.

The room smelled of smoke and was too small for a proper television. It had a computer driven flatscreen which I didn't use because it seemed like it would only show movies and I didn't want to add anything to M's bill. I didn't think I would oversleep but because I planned on meeting the others for breakfast in the morning I decided to set the alarm that was built into the headboard of my bed. The next morning I woke up before the alarm and decided to let it ring to see how it sounded. What followed was the most pitifully squeaking 'beep beep' I had ever heard. I doubt it would have woke me up had I actually been sleeping inside the clock.