Tokyo Week 3: MATSURI, MASSAGE CHAIRS, TEA CEREMONY
Warning: This week I did not go to an animal cafe, so in case you were looking forward to me getting rejected by more animals, unfortunately I have nothing to show this week. On the other hand, if you actually came here to read about my Tokyo summer experience, you’re in the right place!
Today, I am once again…tired. And once again, for a completely different reason than the week before. Today, in order to watch semi-finals of the Euro 2016 where GERMANY faced France, I woke up at around 3:50 AM. I am sorry to say that GERMANY was unable to win, and I showed up to class sleepy and having totally forgotten there was a test. Worth
Saturday
Unable to restrain myself any further, I set my stomach free and set out to eat the fabled monjayaki of Tsukishima (and also to visit Odaiba). Tsukishima and Odaiba are both man-made islands to the south-east of Tokyo, and Tsukishima is especially known for its monjayaki road, where there are over 100 monja restaurants lined up.
Having no idea which store out of the hundred stores was the best, we decided to wait on the one that had the most people lining up. In order not to get hungry, we talked about random topics like how the monja would taste, how good the inside of the restaurant smelled, and looked up pictures and videos on how to make monja. To be honest, there was very little talking. In the end, we were not disappointed:
To be fair, it doesn’t score that highly in the visual aesthetic, but I can assure you the taste is monjayaki out of 10. Usually you also make it yourself, but we recruited the store people to do the deed so it would taste how it is meant to be tasted. Certainly not because we could not figure it out and were afraid of messing up.
Also yes, we ate using a mini-spatula.
After indulging in the monja, we headed for the next destination, Odaiba. Also a man-made island, Odaiba is known for its gigantic ferris wheel, malls, and life-sized Gundam statue. On the way there, we passed by a small park with a pond. There was a sign that clearly said no entering the pond, but as soon as we looked up we saw some bikers bois barge in:
Arriving in Odaiba, we were all tired so we decided to take a quick side-trip and relax at the beach. We bought some floats, propped ourselves on some rocks near the water, and enjoyed the view of the Rainbow Bridge.
I got kind of sleepy, so I took out my trusty eye mask and laid down for a bit.
After a while, a couple of us got restless and went for a walk to the center of Odaiba. Strolling along the Grand Promenade, I took some Grand Pictures and saw a couple interesting buildings:
Continuing on, we came across Diver City Mall, and hotly debated whether it was some kind of wordplay on “diversity.” We decided to finish the argument another time. Anyways, remember the life-sized Gundam statue I mentioned a while back? No, you don’t read anything and just look at the pictures? That’s OK. Here you go:
Also could not resist taking another picture together:
On the way back we decided to check out the weird building with the sphere from before, and thanks to Ana-san we took the stairs:
I want to take this chance now to emphasize the fact that there were a lot of stairs, and that I hold Ana-san responsible for my sore legs.
At the top, what do you know, we found a One Piece store:
The building seemed to have quite a lot of stuff packed into it, but with time running short we needed to head back.
Sunday
Today looked like it would be a pretty lazy day. Thanks to walking around all-day on Saturday, there was a pile of homework to be done, and for some reason it was not getting smaller. My little brother, Sho, also had gobs of homework for his juku (cram school), and so we started the effort together. After about 10 minutes this is how we ended up:
I learned that throwing pencils around is a lot more fun than doing homework. The stuffed animal had nothing to do with homework, but we threw him anyway.
And then, right when things started getting dire, AKA when I finally felt like I should clean up this mess, we were saved! There was a neighborhood matsuri (festival) going on, and Sho and I quickly jumped on the opportunity. Japanese matsuri usually take place in the summer and have an array of interesting activities like goldfish-catching and yoyo-fishing, not to mention food like yakisoba (fried noodles) and takoyaki (octopus balls).
I decided to try out the goldfish game just once, but after failing three times I have concluded that it is impossible. The shop-keepers seem to understand this, and give you free goldfish anyway?
It got pretty crowded really fast, so Sho and I decided to go hide in a corner and drink some ramune while we rested a bit:
We tried out one more game — the yoyo-fishing game — which I was able to win, so I have concluded that it is not impossible.
After winning all the prizes like the victors we are, we returned home to the castle to show Mom the spoils. She was pleased.
Sho also decided to name all the goldfish we won. A few of the memorable names were “blacky,” “whitey,” “orangy,” and “on-the-brink-of-death.” “on-the-brink-of-death” was so named because it almost died during the transport from bag to tank.
We then played with the yoyo’s we won for quite a long time.
I kind of finished my homework.
Monday
Apparently “kind of” is not enough when it comes to finishing homework. I will aim for “basically” next time.
Today after class I ate some fabulous tsukemen (dipping noodles). We had to wait in line (as with every popular restaurants during lunch), but it was definitely worth. Each person receives a plate of noodles and a bowl of soup, and you dip the noodles into the soup to eat them. The noodles are cold, so it’s quite cooling in the summer!
After lunch, we decided to check out an underground sweets paradise in Shinjuku station. As expected, every nook and cranberry was crammed full with sugar. There was also some perfect-looking strawberry shortcake that, alas due to our budgets, we could not purchase. But that didn’t stop me from preserving it in my camera.
The group then decided to split up, with Tomaso-san, Kevin-san and I agreeing to head over once again to Akiba to search for some cheap electronics. We’d heard of a legendary store called Yodobashi Camera, and wanted to check it out.
It was indeed legendary. Eight floors of electronics, ranging from computers and laptops to speakers to overhead lights to game controllers. We spent quite a while on the music floor, playing around with the DJ sets.
The game floor and computer floor were also entertaining, but nothing prepared us for the home electronics floor, which housed all kinds of cool, weird Japanese home electronics. This floor also had what we spent most of our time here playing around with — the massage chairs.
It was simple — stick your feet into the foot massager, feel the engulfing cushions squeeze your soles, and writhe in joy as your feet are massaged with no spot left un-rubbed.
It actually feels really good, but you have to take the time to adjust first.
All in all, we might have spent a little too long with the massage chairs, but after walking so much in the past few weeks, the foot massage made a gigantic difference when we got up to leave. All of us felt lighter, and the pain from walking day-in-day-out essentially vanished.
It was a good walk home.
Tuesday
So. Last time we went to Ikebukuro we passed by a Shonen Jump World, an amusement park but with Jump theme (e.g. Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, etc. etc. etc.). However, because of time and not much interest, we skipped over it. Today, along with Kevin-san and Tomaso-san, I returned to the Jump sanctuary.
The moment we walked in, to greet us at the front door was a ride from one of my beloved series: a sizable One Piece merry-go-round:
Further ahead, we entered Naruto-ville, a replica of the Hidden Leaf Village, and witnessed a real-life Naruto serving food to customers:
Further in came the newer Jump series, and also a big poster with most of the famous characters from the weekly manga publication:
There was a Haikyuu (a series about volleyball) game that involved standing in the middle of a wall, yelling into the mic, and then trying to spike a ball that could go either to the left or right. Depending on how loud you yelled into the mic, the speed of the ball varied, so the louder you yelled the faster the ball would go. I yelled pretty loud.
The amusement park ended with a classic, Dragon Ball, and there were quite a few picture-taking opportunities to be had. Kevin-san had some fun riding a nimbus cloud:
Meanwhile, I tried on some Saiyan armour:
Finally, on the way out, we caught a glimpse of a celebration of Midorima’s birthday. Midorima, a character from the series Kuroko no Basuke, is one of the series’ most popular characters, and quite a lot of fans left a message for him:
All in all, it was a really fun amusement park to go to if you are a fan of Shonen Jump!
On the way out of Sunshine City, a huge complex where the park is located, we also caught a glimpse of an idol concert:
The idols themselves sing and dance, but the fans in the front row knew literally every verse and dance move by heart. Performing finger wags and twirls with perfect precision, every fan would be in sync as they danced to their own, simplified fan-version of the song. It was almost unbelievable dedication, and made us question whether we were really true “fans” of our favorite artists.
Wednesday
Another school-trip, another visit to a Japanese school! This time, we were going to be attending a chakai, a tea ceremony session, at a local Tokyo high school. The students of the tea ceremony club would be serving us tea, and we would experience a staple of Japanese traditional culture. High school here I come!
In general Japanese high schools are quite similar to our own American high schools, but a much larger percentage of Japanese high schools, like this one, require all the students wore uniforms. After taking off our shoes and switching into slippers, we took an elevator up to the 4th floor to the tea ceremony room.
To be able to have such a traditional room in such a modern building surprised all of us, but we enjoyed the feel of the tatami under our feet.
To my delight, the first thing was eating sweets!
Carefully crafted to suit the cooling theme of the tea ceremony, the blue sweet is in the shape of a water ripple, while the pink sweet is in the shape of a flower.
Meanwhile, as we were eating, the tea was being prepared by a senior in the tea ceremony club.
We all drank the tea (delicious!), and at the end were allowed to take a look at the top-secret ingredient:
Tea ceremony is hundreds of years old in Japan, and although the primary objective may be to make tea, one of it’s main goals is to teach one how to become the perfect host. Hospitality, respect, manners, these are all qualities that the high-schoolers attributed to their club activities according to the conversations we had after the ceremony.
Having had some warm tea, I went back home and took a nap. A very relaxing day.
Thursday
Since this blog post is getting (really) long, I’m going to summarize today in one sentence: Today was Tanabata, and we went to Akiba again lol.
Tanabata is a festival where you write wishes onto scraps of coloured paper and tie them onto a tree. Here’s a picture of how Tanabata is celebrated in Akihabara:
Friday
OK, we’re finally here. Today after Germany lost I skipped class and just played Pokemon Go:
… is what I would have liked to do, but I did end up going to class and I did end up having a test today. The buddies also came today, and for lunch we decided to get take-out and eat together in Yoyogi Park. We had a bit of a picnic, and after eating we discovered that Tomaso-san brought along his frisbee. So we all decided to just play a nice, relaxing game of frisbee to digest.
Except that Tomaso-san plays A-team Ultimate Frisbee at Yale and also trains with a local Japanese team on the weekends???
Needless to say, it got intense pretty fast and the buddies were actually quite good too.
After playing frisbee for like 2 hours, we were all severely dehydrated, so we decided to seek out another buddy, at the time working at her part time job at an ice cream truck. But not just any kind of ice cream truck — Handleswagen, a gourmet ice cream trunk. I am not sure if gourmet ice cream is ice cream with more ice or less ice. Actually, I just don’t know what gourmet ice cream is.
So we hopped on a train toward Daikanyama, a wealthy part of Tokyo where you can purchase dogs for 1 million yen:
We passed by a lot of pricey salons and cafes, so no doubt this was an affluent part of Tokyo. According to our buddies, a lot of famous actors also lived around here. After getting lost once and having to ask for directions, we eventually found the gourmet ice cream trunk hidden in a back alley somewhere. It was 500 yen for a small scoop of ice cream, but at this point we were all too thirsty to think about anything other than eating something that contained H20. In the picture below you can see Ibu-san, one of our buddies, with a forlorn look after finishing all of his ice cream:
It was a long day, so I laid down on a bench to relax. After chatting for a bit we decided it was mission-accomplished and time to go home, and so I left the 1 million yen dog district.
As soon as I got back I finished up dinner and made preparations to sleep — I’d been awake for quite a long time today, and I was ready to turn in at any second now. Yet, right as I was about to turn off the lights and go to sleep, I realized I was forgetting something. Indeed, I almost forgot about my blog.
Actually it was not nearly as dramatic. But now, a bunch of paragraphs and like 5000 images later, I am finally at the end. Thank you again for reading my Tokyo travel blog, and I hope you will read the next post as well!
