Today
was our last full day in Tokyo, and Beth still has not had any sushi.
This seems to be making her a bit testy, but she is bearing up well under
the strain. We hit the subway, and again spent some time trying to
match up the japanese characters on the map to determine our fare.
Since there are fifteen or so different train lines, the map looked to
us to be a pile of multicolored noodles, nearly useless. We got off
at Shinjuku station which opens out to a sea of electronics stores selling
rows of cell phones that are smaller than the palm of your hand.
Chris was disappointed that the shops were not yet open. He was,
however, comforted by the fact that we were headed to the Sword Museum.
Tokyo is huge. We went up to the very top of Tokyo Tower, a 1950's japanese version of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Tokyo Tower is taller (but weighs less) and is painted bright orange so planes do not hit it. You cannot walk around underneath it since the entire footprint is filled by the building housing the elevators, and other tourist stuff, including a wax museum housing visages of Frank Zappa, and other world famous rockers (trivia question: who is Tony Immo?)
From
the tower, you can see just how huge Tokyo is. It stretches nearly
as far as you can see, and is punctuated by many big parks. We visited
the Meiji Shrine, a park near downtown, where the emperor Meiji and his
empress were buried. The main shrine is a huge buddhist temple, built in
a completely traditional fashion, using wood and traditional materials.
This is in direct contrast to most of the other temples in the city, which
having burned or fallen in earthquakes, are now built of cement.
Emperor Meiji ruled around the turn of the century, and was responsible
for both opening up Japan to the rest of the world, and for emphasizing
traditional Japanese culture and arts.
Also
in the park is a Torii, or a memorial gate. This particular gate
is made from one 1500 year old Cypress tree. Pretty big gate.