Today me and some friends Erin, Elli, and Paul woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed to go to Tsukiji Market (
http://www.tsukiji-market.or.jp). Well, maybe not so bright eyed. Maybe a bit more like, uh, did we really wake up this early in the morning to go look at fish? The answer: a resounding yes.
So we took a few connections, first by the JR line to Tokyo-eki, and then on the chikatetsu to Ginza-eki, and from there to Tsukiji-eki. Once we got there, we weren't quite sure which direction it was. So, we just followed the old guys wearing boots and carrying baskets, as seen in the first picture.
Inside, the place was a madhouse of people and machines. Guys on electric carts would zoom around us tourists like an obstacle course. Huge fish were being moved en masse here and there. Booths crowded the area, selling all manner of sea creature, the likes of which undoubtedly served as inspiration for countless horror movies. I mean seriously, I have never seen some of these sea creatures before in my life and have no idea what some of them were.
To give you an example, can someone tell me what this is? Okay, so maybe I've seen just a few too many horror/sci-fi movies, but I swear that I had just seen this in some movie attaching itself to someone's face. Or crawling around in a swarm attacking someone.
In any case, the market was great. It was something of a lesson on where our food comes from, since those of us in the big city are so removed from the actual process of dealing with the live animals that we end up eating. Once in a while a whiff of decaying flesh would drift by that occasionally made me a little grossed out, but I got over it pretty quick. I think I love eating fish too much!
Here is a picture of some unagi, or eel. Pretty bloody scene right? But damn they taste good over rice. Eating isn't a very pretty process unless you're a vegetarian. But then you'd be missing out on a whole heck of a lot. My apologies to all the vegetarians out there.
They had a whole warehouse room filled with huge fish that must have weighed a ton. From what I hear, the Tsukiji Market will not be staying at the present location for much longer as it will be moving to a new location. I hope that they do not change the market too much. The beauty of the market is that it seems somewhat industrial and is constantly rushing with activity. It seemed to me to be a cross between "Alien" and "Blade Runner" at times. Very trippy.
One very interesting sight concerned the tako, or octopus at one stand. Granted that the arms of the octopus looked pretty wild, but the interesting thing was a sign that the proprietor had put up next to the octopus admonishing tourists not to touch the octopus.
That they would even have to put up such a sign was a terribly funny reminder of the stupidity of many tourists. I can just imagine some dumb tourist going "Gee, that looks interesting" and then sticking his dirty ass finger into the bin to poke the tentacles or something. It's so sad. It's especially sad because I have already met many people who can't seem to escape being the "Ugly Americans" that the world loves to hate so much.
At one point one of the drivers that I was taking a picture of flashed me a "V" sign. It was the money shot of the day but unfortunately it turned out a bit blurry. But hopefully you can see it somewhat here. Also, check out the carts that they drive around on.
At the end of the trip we ended up going to get something to eat. And of course, some raw fish was definitely in order. From the picture on the right you can see the spread that I ate. The sashimi was extremely tender, but at the same time not very firm. It was very tasty though.
From there we split up and Erin and I went to go check out a museum called the Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, or Tokyo National Museum (
http://www.tnm.go.jp). To the left is a picture of her in front of the Kabuki-za in the Ginza District. Erin was able to hook up some tickets for an exhibit of the Price collection, which is this amazing collection of pieces from the Edo period, that only rarely get shown in such a fashion.
Before I go on to discuss the exhibit, I should mention that the museum had my favorite hand dryer in all of Japan in the bathrooms. It is pictured to the right. What you do is that you dip your hands down into the dryer. A blower blows the water off your hands as you move your hands back up. By the time you move your hands up they are completely dry. This dryer is much more efficient than the typical dryers that you find with the round air hole that you have to rub your hands under. And it kills less trees than paper towels. Pretty cool.
Okay, so the museum exhibit as shown to the left in a surreptitious picture I took was really quite amazing. Much of the art focused on Ito Jakuchu, who was a rather interesting Edo period artist who experimented quite a lot with different techniques in ways that were quite unusual considering the dominant techniques practiced by many schools at the time.
The exhibit was incredibly well designed and Joe Price, who collected the exhibit insisted on using innovative lighting techniques to showcase certain pieces. Also, contrary to usual Japanese curatorial practices, he insisted that the pieces not be shown behind glass. This made for an incredibly interesting exhibit.
Afterwards, we stopped by the Kuroda Memorial Hall (
http://www.tobunken.go.jp/kuroda/index.html), which was dedicated to showcasing the works of Kuroda Seiki, who was a very prominent and important Japanese artist, considered to be the "father of modern Western-style painting." I was a bit tired at the time, so I mostly sat and enjoyed the air conditioning. The art, however, was quite interesting.
From there, Erin and I walked back through Ueno Kouen to the station. On the way you could see where many of the homeless people in the park live. There is a picture of a typical camp to the right. There were quite a few of these camps there and they seemed to have grown in number since the last time I went to the park. At one point a number of homeless people were gathered together to get free food from a local Christian group that was proselytizing. Not that different from America in that sense, I guess.
We caught the JR line and then headed to Harakuju to go stop by Meiji-jingu to check out the shrine. We really wanted to see the goths who usually hang out there, but there weren't many there at all, except for a few. That was somewhat disappointing. Instead, they had a few musical acts, many of which were, uh, not so good. There is a picture to the left of one.
Eventually we went onto the grounds to see the shrine. For some reason I always like to go this shrine. While there we saw a wedding that was in progress and you can bet that those people must be pretty loaded to have their wedding at this famous shrine.
Here is a picture of some of the priests. It was good to visit and pay my respects.
But eventually we left and we decided to go towards Shibuya to get some drinks. We actually ended up walking from Harajuku to Shibuya which seemed like a long distance, considering that we had been walking all day, that it was hot, and that we were carrying these huge books from the museum that we had bought.
On the way we bumped into a very interesting protest that was going on down the street. It seemed that it was a student protest demanding a lowering of student tuition costs. I'm not quite sure which schools the students represented, but it seemed to be a very spirited protest. It was a very nice sight to see, and shows how little truth there is to the myth that all Japanese are just mindless conformists to society.
Eventually we made it to Shibuya, however, and had a few drinks at a local bar. Later we went back towards Yokohama, and found a place that had some good meat dishes and cooked up some beef and chicken yakiniku. It was a great meal to end the day and by the end, however, we were completely tired out. We had probably been up and about for at least 16 hours, and when I got home I quickly plopped down and fell into a deep sleep.
So today again, I didn't have much to report on other than the fact that I had a lot of studying to do since we have midterms on Friday. At lunch I did walk around the Minato Mirai building and the picture to the left is of the nearby convention hall.
As you can see, the building is designed to look somewhat nautical like a ship in keeping with the general theme that Yokohama is such a well-known port city.
So on to the dead jellyfish. There is a nice park nearby that people can relax in (and which I would avail myself of if it wasn't so damn hot!). From the park, folks can look into the water and see the harbor muck. You can see a few jellyfish and the like. At one point I came upon three jellyfish that someone had put on some stones as seen in the picture to the left. It is hard to describe but the smell of those decaying jellyfish was immense. Who would have thought that something so seemingly simple would get so putrid and rank so quickly? Anyways, I quickly left that place and went back to class. School as usual was, well, like school usually is.
