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| Lighted Earth model at MeSci |
First thing, naturally, was getting there, which was going to happen in stages. Since I had always travelled within the country with a rail pass, though this is my sixth time in Japan, it's my first try at buying a bullet train ticket. Being the frugal person I am, I had been wondering up to this point whether there was a way to reduce the fare for my trip to Tokyo by shortening the time spent on the bullet train. This could be accomplished by taking a local train to Hamamatsu, about an hour away from Okazaki. The night before, I finally understood it didn't matter. The basic rate charged per kilometer is the same for shinkansen and local trains but the bullet train charges a flat 3,700 yen express fee, no matter how far you go, for the Kodama and Hikari services and even more for the top level Nozomi service.
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| Odawara Castle |
It sucked then that I only needed it to get to Odawara Saturday morning to meet a friend I met in Vancouver. It was nice to see her again and meet her boyfriend from Regina, on the Canadian prairie, who she convinced to come to Japan to give it a try for a year or so. It must be quite a change for him considering where he's from.
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| Family Barber Shop |
Next, it was to Kawasaki to see an uncle from my mom's side. I've been to his place before but addresses are always fun to work with in Japan. First, aside from the city, you have to find the district your going to, then the section or "Chome", then you have a number set, in my case 10-18. This meant I had to find the 10th block, then find a house that's designated #18 (neither necessarily in any particular order). I had a harder time finding it this time because of the construction in the area. The best thing you can do in these circumstances is to look for a neighbourhood map showing the Chome and block numbers, often near the train station, or ask for directions. Still, it's a challenge.
I planned this visit with my uncle for awhile and while I had a chance to talk to both my uncle and aunt, they operate a barber shop and it was getting busy. I did talk awhile with a cousin while eating sushi and watching the New Year sumo basho on TV.
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| Shibuya in Tokyo |
Next it was on to Shibuya to meet a couple of friends for dinner. One actually. The other couldn't make it. I forgot how busy Shibuya is, even for a cool winter night. There are probably a few places like this outside of Japan but in Tokyo alone, there are a few intersections like in Shibuya where a multitude of bright lights, trains, and streets all converge with massive waves of cars and people who take turns flooding the five or six-way intersection at the change of a traffic signal. To me, it's the penultimate image of contemporary big city life.
My friend wasn't so comfortable with the crowded conditions and I am not always so either, but it can be exciting. We browsed through some CDs and DVDs, had a nice Mexican dinner (sword fish tacos and pork burritos) and later went to sit down for a cup of tea or coffee.
Stayed at another friend's place whose apartment, funnily enough, is actually fairly close to my cousin's place that I stayed at the month before. His place was colder though, especially during the night. Earlier in the month, I was reading an article from a regular humor column, Japan Lite, in the Japan Times newspaper. The writer, an English teacher from Ohio State, apparently makes it an annual practice about the need for Japanese homes to get central heating. My friend's place was fine with the spot heating but the kitchen and bathroom were freezing in the morning.
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| Model of Howl's Moving Castle |
The next morning, the plan was to go to Odaiba, then Ikebukuro for some shopping. En route, we made a bit of a diversion because my friend knows I like Ghibli anime so he wanted to show me a large model of the castle being featured in the studio's upcoming movie "Howl's Moving Castle". We couldn't get close to it because the building was closed but I got a good look at it from a coffee shop inside. Miyazaki Hayao's imagination never ceases to amaze me. Too bad I will likely have to wait at least a year to see the movie back at home.
The train line to Odaiba is one of the newer ones, and seemingly priced that way, so I was surprised to find that while the cars were emmaculate with very comfortable seats for public transit, it felt cramped. It turns that the trains are driverless too, like the ones back home in Vancouver which also have passenger cars with relatively cramped conditions.
One thing I liked about coming to Odaiba was getting a closer look at the Tokyo Port. Aside from my regular job, my image of Tokyo is still dominated by its concrete jungle so it was nice to see some open sea for a change. I was surprised to read before the weekend that there was a Statue of Liberty replica on the island. Of course, it looks newer but, unlike the original, it faces toward the island instead of out to sea.
The nearby Fuji television building must be one of the reasons why the guidebook I read said that Odaiba was a place that makes you wonder for which part of the 21st century it was developed for. We went for a walkthrough the lower floors of the building past sets, displays and studios where shows such as the Japanese version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" is taped. I don't follow the show so I don't know if a million yen is the top prize here, a hundred times less than what is offered in the U.S.
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| View of Tokyo Port | Replica of Statue of Liberty | Fuji Television Building |
The main reason I wanted to go to Odaiba, though, was the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. Japan has consistently been near the top when it comes to scientific innovation and so I've enjoyed stopping by science museums here to see what's new and improved. In this case, certainly the science museum itself since the last one I stopped by in Tokyo was in Ueno Park. I don't know when this one was built but it must have been fairly recently.
Another reason to think it's still a pretty new facility is that the place is very spacious. There was plenty to see as it was but there's still room for a lot more. As it was, in the three floors they were using for exhibition space, they covered the environment, biology, chemistry, robotics, computers, space and underwater exploration, to name a few. The space shuttle living quarters capsule and a deep underwater explorer, with its video of beautiful marine life I'd never seen before, were a couple of exhibits that provoked my imagination of unexplored places, forgetting that I was still in one of the world's largest cities.
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| Space shuttle capsule display at MeSci | Display of sleeping quarters on space shuttle | Deep underwater explorer |
Speaking of unearthly life, the robotics area included a Honda robot demo which I saw. I heard earlier in the trip that there was now a robot that can l get both feet off the ground, a necessity for the progression from walking to running. I also heard that one company, I think it's Bandai, more known for toys, has a goal of building a real Doraemon by 2010. Doraemon is a talking robot cat who has been an anime mainstay for as long as I can remember (though I still don't think he looks like a cat). I suppose it's a little more of a realistic goal than building a real Iron-armed Atom (Astro Boy). Maybe they're afraid that if they did, he might come to life with an Austrian accent.
This one couldn't run but it was still impressive to be able to see this demo in front of me (in other words, this model is relatively obsolete enough that the makers aren't so worried about security and secrecy). I thought it was progress as it was to have a model that could balance on one foot and was completely self-contained (in other words, it doesn't have a trailing cable and not overburdened with an overly massive power pack).
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| Asimo walking | Honda Asimo Robot | Balancing demonstration |
There's always something new to learn with science but I like what I saw with the Universal Patterns film they played in the museum's Dome theater. In it, they showed how certain patterns, five of them, are pervasive in nature. I recognized them but never thought of them as universal - explosion, spiral, wave, packing, and branching. The nice thing about science also is that it's communication is more universal. I was able to understand most of the film though most of it was in Japanese (then again, a lot of it was based on images anyways).
Could have spent the whole day there, and I didn't get to see some of the sections, but my friend and I had yet to have lunch and I still wanted to do some gift shopping. We were planning to go to Ikebukuro but went to Omote Sando instead. I don't ever remember it being shoulder-to-shoulder crowded but then again, I don't remember if I ever came here on a weekend. Omotesando is where the Oriental Bazaar store is, a good one-stop place for basic Japanese souvenirs, so I made a quick stop to see if I could get any ideas. I picked up a few ukiyo-e postcards to send to some people I missed on my Christmas card list and a few mini-cd's to send to my families back home. I also picked up a couple of small ukiyo-e prints as presents for a couple of co-workers.
For the trip home, I decided to go on the cheap and tag-team on the local trains back to Okazaki. It was a six-hour trip in total on four trains, transferring in Numatsu, Shizuoka, and Hamamatsu, but I didn't mind. After all, two weeks before, I spent six hours riding in a van coming back from Tsugaike Kogen after the Nagano Discovery Tour and trains are a lot more comfortable. I often do my best reading on long trips too. The long ride let me read a newspaper and a manga, study some Japanese, eat a bento dinner, and write part of this journal entry. I planned the trip beforehand using the train schedule, in Japanese, but missed one footnote that one of my intended trains isn't in service on the weekend. It only cost me an extra twenty minutes though it meant I was catching the very last train to Okazaki that evening so I was cutting it close.
I did save myself the 3,700 yen bullet train surcharge so it was worth the effort. Too bad that I plan on going to Tokyo only once more during my three-month stay, for the trip back home in February. Still, I can't ask for a more appropriate way station between the end of my three-month stay in Okazaki and the return to my regular life in Vancouver. After all, if my last weekend in Japan turns out anything like this one in Tokyo, it'll be a nice change from the world I'm leaving and the one I'm going back to.