Contrasts during a Sunday in Tokyo

I had a wonderful Sunday in Tokyo. I woke up a bit early - about 5:30 here, and called home to California for a bit; did some online banking; tried unsuccessfully to fall back asleep; and then finally decided to shower and head out. The default jetlagged-tourist event here is to head to Tsukuji, the wholesale fish market, but it isn't open on Sundays, so I had to come up with my own plan.

Breakfast was a bit of a scavenger hunt. To start I had a lovely hot bowl of udon at the Ebisu train station. It's a great little haunt where one gets to choose from a set of doughy fried vegetables and other toppings for a bowl of hot noodles. My favorite this morning was the bundle of fried shimeji mushrooms. I think I might go slurp there again tomorrow on the way to the office. I then went north on the Yamanote line to Harajuku, where on the first Sunday of the month at the Togo Shrine is a flea market. Not quite Portobello Road or Stanley Market, but a small little place where locals have brought arts, crafts, and dated music records. I got to wander around a bit and skip the mostly closed shops on Takeshita-Dori on a nice, brisk, sunny Tokyo morning.

After that I decided to wander around a bit. I think I walked about 8km this morning, heading via Aoyama Cemetaryon to Roppongi Hills, and then eventually back to Ebisu via Sengakuji near Shinagawa station. (I will admit the last part of the walk was not quite as planned, but I got distracted and then a bit lost on the way back to Ebisu and didn't have a detailed map of the area and couldn't read the Kanji describing the chome I was in...but it was fun.)

I happened to wander by the Prada building in Tokyo while walking this morning. The Herzog /de Meuron building was something that has been on "my list" for a number of years, but finding it this morning was really serendipity. When I walked by at 9:46, it was pretty quiet and the store wasn't open. The building has sets of flat, convex, and concave diamonds of glass that undulate in the light and offer almost "funhouse mirror" reflections of the area. I spent maybe 10-15 minutes just wandering around the building looking at the different light and reflections. I'm not quite sure why, but I was almost endlessly amused watching this woman go back and forth polishing the glass.

I spent the afternoon with Fuji-san and his wife Chiko-san. We went to the Tokyo-Edo museum to get a feel for the city history of Tokyo since 1603. It was interesting to see the development of the city as a view of Japanese culture and expansion. In some ways it was similar to the Barcelona city history museum that Marah and I visited last October--the museum showed progressive maps of the city, with depictions of the reclamation of Tokyo Bay. We had a tour guide for a bit and a young couple from eastern India joined us. The guy from India clearly had studied Japanese history quite a bit, and offered several comments and opinions during the tour. They did note many customs-like taking shoes off before entering a home, and keeping a small shrine inside one's house- transcended cultures and countries.

The couple had an interesting point about Japan (esp. juxtaposed with India), though without an accurate quote this may not convey the nuance. "You rely on electricity a lot," said the young woman. I really was not sure what she meant nor how to respond. She clarified, that in India they would rely upon stairs in buildings but here in Japan they have elevators and escalators for everything. (I didn't really interject about this transcending Japan, US, EU, ...) Chiko-san and I were both puzzled.

After the museum we headed over to the Senso temple, and then went in search of a Tonkatsu (deep fried pork cutlet) restaurant he had heard great things about. When we found it, there was a sign that indicated it was closed due to renovations ... which reminded me of the sign that I recently saw at my favorite Columbus Bakery in NYC. (For those of you without the history, it was a tasty place on 82nd/Columbus with a cool "Toasty Man" logo. Unfortunately, the silly people didn't appear to be upfront about so-called renovations, and have since closed/changed ownership.)

Oh, but I digress. We went to find another Tonkatsu place, and had a tasty dinner. They're both lovely people, and I had a great time with them in the afternoon. Meanwhile, it's just about nine o'clock here and I think I'm going to try to stay awake for a few more hours such that I can make it through my day at work tomorrow.