Smile, it makes people nervous.

In my travels around Japan I came across quite a few memorable sights most of them impressive and some awe inspiring. But among them stood out those that sent me into quite unseemly fits of laughter and it wasn't just Lena's handling of chopsticks. Japanese signs were so outstanding that I thought they deserved a separate entry. Unfortunately not all of them I was able to capture but those few that I did will still give you an idea, the rest I left to other travelers to marvel at.

( Signs )

Saturday morning greeted us with pouring rain. Disappointed but not discouraged we dragged ourselves out of the room and in search of umbrellas. Search ended very quickly: hotel lobby sported an umbrella dispenser. BTW, umbrellas in Japan are ubiquitous, you can buy them on practically every corner, most public places have umbrella stands at the entrances (you just stick your umbrella in and when you come back it's still there!), and places that don't have stands give you special umbrella bags. After arming ourselves we slightly revised our planned itinerary and headed to Nijojo (Nijo Castle).

( Pictures )

Complete album:
Kyoto, Day Two

A fast approaching end to the trip forced me to put some efforts into my search for souvenirs. I had a list of things to buy and very vague idea of where to look for them. So, Thursday was set aside for a shopping excursion. However, to sweeten the deal a bit, first stop of the day was the Japanese Sword Museum.

The proclaimed mission of this museum is preservation and popularization of Nihon-to. The preservation part they got down pretty well, all the items on display seemed to be in excellent condition. Popularization part, however, needs some work.

For starters, the museum is out of the way of any but the most determined tourist, it is not advertised in any tourist guide books or pamphlets that I've seen, it has no English explanations to go with the display pieces, and no literature in English in the museum store. Basically, only somebody who already has a strong interest in Japanese swords would find himself at the exhibit. And that is sad because they did accumulate a beautiful collection of blades and sword fittings. It's not large, just one moderately sized room, but it's the largest collection I've ever seen in a museum. The blades seemed to cover the golden age of Japanese sword making. I say 'seemed' because there were no dates that I could read attached to the swords, which makes me think that they were designated by eras, in Japanese. Terribly useful. And by myself I can miss dating a blade correctly by a few hundred years.

Also, there was no photography allowed, which I find completely idiotic. I understand how flash photography can be damaging to, say, paintings. What possible harm can photography do to a steel blade? And if you are not letting people photograph, why not have a color brochure available with pictures of all the exhibits? In English. And some other languages, too, actually. Not here, though. It was completely infuriating not being able to take anything away from there except memories. And since I don't have a photographic one, in a few weeks all I will be able to remember will be the fact that I visited the museum and liked it a lot.

( Shopping )

I've packed. I've repacked. Then I repacked again. But now, in a few minutes, my cousin and then Lena are supposed to show up and I'll be on my sad way home. Still owe myself, and whoever else is reading this, I suppose, five days worth of adventures but that will have to wait till I am safely in New York. I loved it here. I'd love to stay longer (a year or five, maybe). Desperately hope to come back again. I have a pocketful of small change, might not be a bad idea to find some fountain and dump it in there. For now it's a good bye, though. See you all soon.

During the planning stages of this trip I decided to visit Yokohama if I get a chance. There really isn't any rational explanation for my desire to drop by this fairly young modern city unless you know that Yokohama is a sister city of Odessa. And it's very close to Tokyo. And it has a very nice Japanese garden (I have a weakness for Japanese gardens) that was created in early 1900s but actually contains some very old historical buildings that were moved to the garden from other sites, restored and artfully arranged to display them to their best advantage. So, all those reasons combined to give me a perfect day trip from Tokyo. On Monday I hopped onto JR train and a short ride later was getting off at Yokohama station. Additional half hour on the bus, after some confusion I did manage to first get onto the correct bus and then get off at the correct stop, and I was at the Sankeien Garden.

( Pictures )

Complete album:
Yokohama

Asakusa (pronounced Asaksa) is a very lively neighborhood that I already visited two days ago to take in the Sensoji Temple, Asakusajinja Shrine and a famous shopping strip of Nakamise. So this is where I came back tonight deciding to stick around to see if the temple looks nice in the dark with the spotlights. While waiting for the dark to settle I had dinner.

Since our previous efforts at dinners were rather unsatisfying I decided not to experiment too much and just stepped into the first respectable looking sushi place I came across. It was one of those spots where the small plates with sushi go round on a conveyor belt and you just pick up whatever you like and then pay according to the number of plates you accumulated. Different colored plate - different price. (We used to have one of these in the World Financial Center, but I don't know if it's still around.) Somehow most of the stuff I liked fell into 120 yen category, there were also few cheaper items, like regular tuna, for instance, and some really expensive (500 yen) disgusting looking things. Beauty of this sort of place for a foreigner is that you don't have to know a word of Japanese to feel completely comfortable. As long as you know enough to recognize all the items you need, you are all set.

Don't know how high this joint would be rated among Japanese but as far as I was concerned the food was better than the average fare you would get at a typical New York Japanese restaurant. I was rather hungry and managed to accumulate about 8 plates before getting my fill, which basically meant that my dinner cost me 1,000 yen or less than $10, and no waiting time. Not a bad deal if you ask me.

So far I've had sushi three times. First time Lena's friend Ida took us to a nice place for lunch, sushi there was excellent but she had to order for us. Second time we got a take out with my cousin, prepackaged box of sushi. That was barely passable even by NY standards and included some stuff that I don't eat, like octopus (too chewy even for me) and sea urchin (too disgusting even to look at). And this place. I only picked the stuff I recognized: yellow tail, some other white fish (I like most of those), eel, shrimp (the normal kind, not the gellied one that they seem to prefer), crab. All of it was very good.

After refueling I walked around Asakusa for about an hour, browsed through all the tiny shops lining the streets and decided on what I wanted to get for myself before leaving. Didn't buy anything yet, though. And, of course, I did get to see the temple and the surroundings. Quite pretty:

( Pictures )

Complete album:
Asakusa

A sad sight of wet Tokyo that greeted me this morning upon waking up decided my itinerary for today. I decided to load up on some culture and with that in mind set off towards Tokyo National Museum. It's one of the museums located around Ueno Park and according to the guide "if you are only going to visit one museum, make it a Tokyo National Museum". Museum is actually comprised of four separate buildings but I only visited the one dedicated to the Japanese Arts.

( Pictures )

Overall I came out of the museum very satisfied with the experience. However, it was only 2pm and my day was far from over.

Complete album:
Tokyo National Museum

Yesterday Lena decided to pick a place for dinner out of the guide. The place she chose supposedly had an English menu but didn't have an English sign outside. Since Tokyo can boast one of the most bizzare building numbering schemes, we did not want to trust our dinner chances just to the address, so Lena copied down the Japanese sign to the best of her calligraphic abilities and we went searching. There we were, walking down the street, Lena busy carefully inspecting all the signs, me just trailing along. At this one spot she decided to ask for my advice, which I readily offered saying that to me it looks just right (those wiggles all look the same to me, to be quite frank). Wrong answer, apparently, because I was told I was crazy and then dragged on farther. Two blocks later, when we finally started paying attention to the numbers, we figured out that we must have missed our destination and after some hesitation decided to turn back. Well, after realizing that it indeed was possible to follow blocks 3-9 and 3-8 with a 3-4, we located the restaurant easily enough. You probably have guessed by now, it was the exact same spot I mentioned earlier and had Lena listened to me it would have saved us some fruitless wondering around. As it was, I got something to gloat about for the rest of the evening. Food, btw, was terrible, by the end of dinner I was wishing we never found the place.

My first full day in Japan started pretty early, Lena leaves for work around 8:30 am and in an effort to get my bearings and some breakfast I walked her to work in the morning. We stopped for breakfast at a French cafe, decided to meet up later for lunch and went our separate ways. My chosen destination was Marunouchi or, more specifically, Imperial Palace and the East Garden. To my surprise I managed to get to them, see everything I planned and get back without getting lost ones! I think this was the first for me. I compensated for it later.

( Pictures )

TBC

Complete albums:
Imperial Palace
East Garden
Bonus

Ленка, тебе может пригодится ;)