So i found out that i was spending almost 700+ yen on subway trips per day, i figured what they hell and got a 710 yen all day pass. There's actually a variety of passes you can buy here in tokyo, but the simple ones are 710 for a subway pass: but not for all the lines! If you want all the subway lines, it costs something like 1000 yen, and if you want to include JR (they have 1 useful line that runs in a loop, and there are a few spots that only have JR stations near them), it costs 1580 Yen.
Anyway, I got the 710 pass yesterday, and used it to do a tour of Harajuku (again), Shibuya (again), Ginza (again), Akihabara (the electronics district), and Roppongi (the gaijin entertainment district).
Harajuku had its famous tenny bopper goth turnout on Sunday which was a bit smaller than i expected. Yoyogi park was apparently the former olympic village, so overall its pretty nice. I was originally going to go to the a particular sword museum, but after re-verifying its locationk as being in BFE, i aborted and just toured the yoyogi gymnasium area (former olympic gymnasium) where there were a wad of people doing Tai-chi and wu-Shu. There was also the stage area where there was a market and various food stands throughout selling takoyaki (octopus balls), yakisoba, and okonomiyaki. I held out on getting opn any food till Shibuya...
Shibuya was just a short stop mainly to get food at my favorite ramen shop. I also made a visit to Tower records to pickup a copy of Metropolis, a weekly english event guide. I happend to run into a signing session for an apparently famous piano player (classical). I didnt recognize the name, but ive been out of the classical loop for a while....
Ginza was mainly to visit the Rice Gallery which turned out to be more of one big Rice Store selling various products (lotions, cremes, snacks, powders, and even crepes!) made out of rice. The had a few free recipe cards i snagged (in japanese though...). Next door was the Yamaha Hall where they had a pianist playing. Not bad and a nice 15 minute of chill time. Along the street, their "Ginza Accuille" (something like that) was still going on; they closed the street and were performing tea ceremonies. I dont think i mentioned yesterday how they also had a parade which was quite nice. The first part was boring as hell as was a ppretty standard parade with high school marching bands, cars and hte like. The last part was pretty interesting, having people walking and dancing in traditional garb from various regions around japan.
Akihabara was relatively dispappointing as i didnt catch anything really cool (i have no idea what the aussies were talking about). It all seemed like pretty normal stuff at normal to expensive prices! I think electronic-wise, the coolest thing ive seen in japan has actually been the little hot water pots which keep track of temperature electronically and automatically pump for you with the touch of a button. Of course, with electronics its difficult to dicern the finer features, so they could have had the latest and gretest things that i just couldnt appreciate. Ill have to do some research...
Roppongi...The roppongi hills is a pretty nice area. Reminded me a little of Canal City in Fukuoka, but was large and a little bit nicer. Roppongi Hills is quite the shi-shi area of Tokyo (I formerly thought this was supposed to be Ginza....) as many people here are dressed one notch up from all the rest (they already dress pretty nice most of the time) and the cars are also pretty nice (i saw at least 2 ferraris, plenty of high end mercedes). It all reminded me a little of LA westwood area (i dont recall the venue i visited) with the posh restaurants, valet parking, and nice cars zooming all around.
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A group of 3 guys i coulda sworn were maffia just left my hotel, thank god. Theywere staying right across from me, VERY loud speaking an odd dialect of italian (it was germanic sounding at times...) and always packing boxes and speaking very loudly, and always with a "do not disturb" sign on their door when they werent there. I heard them on the phone speaking english once the conversation went..."Well be there tomorrow to pickup the merchandise....25 boxes".
Also a little twist to the murder story is that now the guy who was killed was supposedly a Yakusa guy who thought he could cut in line because of his status...
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One of the internet places i frequent for some reason refuses to work with the blog software correctly. Thus every now an then 2-3 new entries will appear because the entries get saved, however the blog doesnt get updated until i visit one of the other cafes that works correctly.
Good job
Posted by: Allison at August 8, 2004 08:43 AM