Final Days in Japan

July 10, 2009

I now bring you the conclusion of my wondrous trip to the far east.

I only had one day in Hiroshima because of how long I had allotted myself for this last sightseeing trip. In retrospect, it was a bad idea to try to visit so many cities in a week, but it turned out all right. I was pretty tired when I got there, so I didn’t do much exploring. I just got some sort of soup with breaded pork cutlet and then chilled at my hotel for that night. The next day, I visited the Peace Memorial Park. It was interesting, I suppose. The most interesting thing was a building that remained standing after the explosion of the atomic bomb. It’s appropriately named the A-Bomb Dome. The pictures pretty much speak for themselves.
More shots of the dome.
Some sort of remains
Fountain near the dome
Plaque explaining the history of the dome: 1 2 3 4
And, pictures on the plaque: 1 2 3 4
Bench in the park. The plaque reads: “Let us join hands with the people of the world and become happy”
Some sort of arch/dome. Hanging in the center is an origami crane.
Eternal flame
This was pretty cool, especially since you can see the A-Bomb Dome through the arch.

There was also this peace bell, which was kinda cool. I took a video of myself ringing it, for some reason. And here’s a plaque explaining the meaning behind it. The bell also has a map of the world and some signatures on it. Oh right. I forgot to mention that this sightseeing kinda sucked, because it was raining all day and since I had to check out of my hotel I was carrying my fully-loaded backpack around with me. I suppose I could’ve left it at the front desk, but I was already leaving my suitcase there.

After Hiroshima, I boarded the Shinkansen again and headed for Kyoto. The hotel was supposed to be close to the train station, so I decided to just walk there. It ended up being a bit farther than I wanted, but it still wasn’t too far. The worst part was when I thought my walking was over, but I had actually found a different hotel that was in the same hotel chain, so it had the same name but I hadn’t made a reservation there. The one I actually made a reservation at wasn’t too far away, so I don’t know why they have two hotels so close to each other. In Kyoto, I visited the Kyoto Tower, which was your typical touristy observation tower. I guess I saw some interesting things from the tower, but something else held my attention more than that. July 7th is a festival known as Tanabata in Japan. It’s too bad I couldn’t have seen it while I was there, but oh well. This plaque pretty much explains what it’s about. What it doesn’t explain, though, is that a custom for this holiday is to write a wish on a piece of paper and tie/tape it to a tree branch, though in the Kyoto Tower they just had them on Post-it notes on a bulletin board. I took some pictures of some wishes that I thought were interesting.
“I want to date an Italian”
“I LOVE YOU; Kanta <3 Misato; I hope we can be together forever"
“I hope to grow taller!!”
“I hope my mother and father will always be healthy.”
“Money”
Some people missed the point
Something in…Swedish? Norse?
More traditional wish displays
The mascot for the Kyoto Tower. Kinda creepy if you ask me.
There was a wall of birthday wishes for the Kyoto Tower, and I thought this was pretty funny

After that, I visited the shop at the base of the tower and picked up a baseball hat for my brother, which is emblazoned with the kanji for samurai （侍）. I also visited the International Manga Museum, which would have been more interesting had I known more Japanese. It was less of a museum and more of a large manga library where you can just pick stuff out and read it. They did have a small exhibit on Comiket (a huge convention for manga and anime in Japan), though, which was pretty cool. They had a book that listed all the dealers and stuff for one of the ’07 conventions, and it was like…a phone book.

Next, I headed to Tokyo. Pretty much immediately after arriving, I knew there was something I had to do, a duty that had to be accomplished. Recently, they have constructed a life-size model of a Gundam, which is the titular robot of the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam, so I had to go see it. Not much to say about this, but I put a bunch of pictures of it in a gallery on Facebook if you want to see.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=134645&id=666115800&ref=mf

Also, I took a short video for some reason. There was music and sound playing, so I guess just pictures can’t capture that.

The next day I headed to Akihabara, a huge electronics/anime/game district in Tokyo. It was…pretty impressive. I got the feeling that if there was any sort of electronic equipment you needed to buy, you could undoubtedly find it there in twenty varieties. It seemed like most stores sort of specialized in one or two products. For instance, there was a store that sold just light bulbs, next to it was a store that sold cables and wires, etc. Contrasting that were 6-8 stories-high stores filled with more doujins, figures, and random merchandise than you can imagine. Every store had at least one floor dedicated to adult merchandise. For some reason, a lot of these stores prohibited photography, so I just adopted a philosophy of, um, taking pictures unless I actually saw a sign that said otherwise. I asked a store clerk why they didn’t allow pictures, and he just replied with “because it’s prohibited” and pointed at the sign. I guess that’s more of a question for the manager or something, but I didn’t feel like pushing it.

The day after that, I took a trip to go see the Tokyo Tower, which is essentially Japan’s version of the Eiffel Tower. On the way there, I visited Zojo Temple. Forgot to specifically take a picture of it, but you could see people’s Tanabata wishes tied to tall stalks of bamboo outside the main building. Inside, I saw some monks praying, which was kinda cool. There was also a cedar tree planted by President Grant. By the way, in case any of you aren’t aware of the difference between a temple and a shrine, it’s pretty simple. Temples are Buddhist and shrines are Shinto. I guess if you wanna remember it, the two S’s go together.　I also looked around the graveyard a bit. This one was notably less labyrinthine than the one I visited in Fukuoka.
Statues of Buddha?
No clue what these are supposed to symbolize
Some sort of…something at the temple
Prayer incense. I didn’t do it myself, but I saw some other people praying. I guess you take some of the, uh, “raw” incense and sprinkle it on top of the already smoldering incense in the larger pot, then pray, then sprinkle some more on.
I don’t actually know what this is
A window where you could look down towards the base of the tower

Tokyo Tower wasn’t anything terribly special except that they had a bunch of side attractions near the base, like some sort of exhibit about the Guinness Book of World Records and an aquarium, both of which I didn’t visit.
View from the Tokyo Tower
Pretty smoggy.
Strange-looking building

And that was my last day in Tokyo. The next day I took the train to the airport and flew back to the USA. The flight was 11 hours long, two hours shorter than the flight there. I only got about an hour of sleep, so I was dead when I got back. Not too different from the flight to Japan, except that I arrived at night so I could just go right to sleep. I got back in the US at around 1:30 PM, so I had to stay up for another 10 hours before I could sleep. It’s been some of the most intense jet lag I’ve ever had. I’m only just now getting over it, even though I’ve been back for about 5 days.

Time to throw in the rest of the pictures that didn’t fit in the above text.
Pepsi Shiso If you go to Japan while they still have this, I’d recommend not trying it. The bottle describes it as “Japanese Refreshing Flavor”, but it tasted to me like Mountain Dew with an aftertaste of Big Red.
Ad for something called “Gundam World 2009″
Ad for a maid cafe in Akihabara
Body pillows with anime characters on them
Elevators in the US are never this cool
Lucky Star in a can…?
Didn’t realize they had one of these in Japan, too
Ad for an anime movie called Kara no Kyoukai
I…don’t know what this is advertising. The text at the bottom says “Do you like science?”
…Tommy Lee Jones?
The most ridiculous parfait I’ve ever seen
An arcade game about making sushi. I kid you not.