Watch The Sunday Gang In Harajuku, There's Something Wrong With Me, I'm A Cuckoo

When lost in a maze of concrete, inundated by logos as far as the eye can see and blinded by flashing neon, it becomes easy to think that there isn’t any space left in Tokyo for creative expression. You would be wrong however, as the city actually has a long history of street performance. Sure, the paint-huffing hippies and subversive happenings are nowhere to be found in Shinjuku these days, replaced by skyscrapers and shopping malls some thirty odd years ago. If you visit Harajuku on a Sunday, however, you’ll see that the spirit of public performance is still very much alive, albeit in a different form.

Harajuku, located in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward, first rose to prominence in the 1980s as street performers began to gather on Omotesando (the main drag in front of Harajuku station) when it would close to traffic on Sundays. Today, Harajuku is also known as a hub for fashion and large department stores like La Foret, which cater to current trends, have earned the area a reputation as the center of youth style. Just across from the station is Takeshita Street, which is packed to the gills with tiny boutiques catering to all the various colors of the teen fashion spectrum. You might recall that things were a bit more muted during my last trip to Harajuku due to inclement weather but this time, it was absolutely bustling. As anthropologist Joseph J. Tobin notes, “shopping on a Sunday on a pedestrians-only street in Shinjuku, Shibuya, or Harajuku feels like the Japanese equivalent of Mardi Gras in New Orleans or carnival in Rio, with money and packages taking the place of music and dance”.

That’s not to say, however, that real music and dance can’t also be found in Harajuku. Making our way from the station to the Meiji Shrine, we pass over this footbridge, which Greg affectionately refers to as “The Goth Bridge”. You’ll soon see why.

On Sundays, the bridge is crowded with various teens sporting the latest in fringe fashions (such as “Gothic Lolita”) and cosplay (an abbreviation for “costume play”) outfits. They meet up with friends, pose for photographers and generally just loiter around like all good teenagers do.

This is what it looks like when cultures collide, in this case, Gothic Lolita and plain old goth, or “Goth Classic,” as I like to call it.

This man takes cosplay very seriously. Yes, those are live goldfish on his traffic cone helmet. Here’s hoping he has better luck with those than old Disco Stu did.

Harajuku was so happening that even Rivers Cuomo decided to stop by! Sure, he ditched his trademark horn-rimmed specs so as not to be mobbed by fans but the “now recruiting Japanese girlfriends” sign was a dead giveaway.

Of course, with all those scantily-clad, leather-sporting young girls around, Harajuku is bound to attract a certain breed of pervert…

Oh, wait. That’s just Ryan.

There we go, a prime example of a creepy ojisan! Armed with an expensive digital SLR camera and accompanying telephoto zoom lens, the prototypical creepy ojisan darts around Harajuku on Sundays, competing with foreigners for that perfect shot of the girl in a tank top and gas mask. Who knows what nefarious purposes he'll use those photos for? Wait, scratch that, I’m pretty sure that everyone knows the answer to that question.

Walk a bit farther past the shrine and you’ll enter Yoyogi park. This is where most of the performers gather in Harajuku and where you can see everything from martial artists to skateboarders.

“Everything” unfortunately includes this guy who was doing boring stuff with some balls on a string. Yawn.
Past the boring guy you’ll find the Tokyo Rockabilly Club, a Harajuku institution, if there ever was one. Although there were once hundreds of members, today only nine remain, faithfully meeting in Yoyogi Park every Sunday as they always have. So what exactly is it that they do?
Well, to put it quite simply, they play rockabilly music on a boom box and rock the fuck out.
Outside the park is an area where various musicians perform along either side of a major street. Across from this street is another park that surrounds Tokyo Olympic Stadium. Considered the masterwork of architect Kenzo Tange, the stadium hosted the 1964 Olympic Games and was considered to be a symbol of the radical transformation that Tokyo’s landscape underwent in the mid to late 1960s-a period that some scholars describe using the term “Olympic modernity”. Here we see a god-awful boy band performing in front of that distinctive stadium. Seriously, these guys couldn’t even carry a tune.
As mentioned on Matt’s blog, the hard rock band Samurai. I stood and watched them for a few minutes but only out of sympathy for the fact that no one else would.
Past the stadium was an area where a number of companies were advertising various products, just outside of NHK studios. Greg and I took this opportunity to show the dinosaur some love.

Most terrifying mascot ever? I do believe so. If this is really what angels look like, I’ll be quite happy to join old Virgil in the depths of inferno.

I’ve decided to save the best for last: this awesome band that was performing just outside of Yoyogi park. They all wore matching yellow suits and dresses and led the assembled (and enthusiastic) crowd in a series of jumps, hand claps and dance maneuvers. Despite what old Stuart Murdoch might say, I really think that you would have to be cuckoo not to enjoy a Sunday in Harajuku.

The Simulacra As A Tourist Trap: Touring The "Amusement Parks" of Tokyo

During my most recent trip to Tokyo a few weeks ago, I started to notice a theme emerging as I moved steadily through the city from tourist trap to tourist trap. Rather than reflecting my own personal tastes, this common thread seemed to have more to say about Japanese perceptions of leisure and entertainment. You see, Japan is full of so-called “amusement parks,” although most of these attractions are nothing like the theme parks that Americans associate with that term. Sapporo has a ramen theme park, Osaka has a theme park centering on local cuisine of the past and in Tokyo, an ice cream theme park and a gyoza theme park can be found in the same building. While many of these parks choose food as their subject matter, the main attraction is usually the space itself, which aims to create a completely immersive world within its boundaries.

Many of these parks, if not the vast majority of them, appeal directly to nostalgia, clearly one of the more powerful marketing tactics in Japan today. Of course, instead of presenting visitors with an accurate depiction of the past, they present a bite-sized piece of a fetishized past, sterilized for easy digestion; all of the charm of 1950s Tokyo with nary a homeless child or unsightly American G.I. in sight. History revised and then repackaged, for quick and easy consumption.

Perhaps the most interesting type of park in this genre is that which recreates space that never existed in Japan in the first place. Recreations of pasts that most Japanese have never experienced, appealing to an imagined sense of nostalgia. Anthropologist Joseph J. Tobin has gone as far as to identify such spaces as physical embodiments of Baudrillard’s simulacra, “re-creations of a past that never happened and things that never existed”.

I once read a really good essay on these types of parks, perhaps it was in this book? Were I able to locate the essay, rest assured I would make any number of grand academic pronouncements and would parade around quotes from any number of old men in tweed sports coats in order to legitimize those claims. Luckily for you, that volume is buried somewhere in the bottom of a box in a Wisconsin basement, so I’ll spare you the theory and instead, treat you to a few photographs.

Here we see what appears to be an Italian port town in Tokyo Disney Sea’s “Mediterranean Harbor”. Tokyo Disneyland is considered to be the nation’s premiere vacation destination by many Japanese and will be discussed at length in an upcoming entry.

Mama mia! The Italy of yore again rears its head, this time in the Toyota History Garage in Odaiba.

A shopping mall in Odaiba, adjacent to the Toyota complex.
“Little Hong Kong,” which occupies the top two floors of the Decks mall in Odaiba.

Sorry Oirase! It looks like Odaiba’s got you beat with a larger and more accurate statue of liberty.

Finally, the streets of jazz-age Tokyo in the basement of the Ramen Museum in Shin-Yokohama, which will also be discussed in a future entry.

The Stars Of Track And Field

In early spring, Japanese children of all ages can be found lacing up their running shoes, carefully painting banners and practicing complicated dance routines. Spring is undoukai season in Japan and schools everywhere are rife with excitement leading up to the yearly sports festival.

I was invited to attend three separate sports festivals this year but due to schedule conflicts, I was only able to make an appearance at one. Having accepted the invite, I considered it my official duty to show up in a timely manner. After all, the sports festival would probably amount to little more than a few kids running around in the dirt and the absence of the town’s resident foreigner would surely be noticed.
Well, you can imagine my surprise when I showed up at Momoishi Elementary School on a Saturday morning (about an hour late and still recovering from a night out in Hachinohe, as can be expected) to find tents, announcers and literally hundreds of people. It turns out that the sports festival is probably the biggest event held by the school every year and family members show up in droves to cheer on their offspring.
As this is Japan, the front lines were filled with expensive optical equipment: the latest handheld camcorders, digital SLRs and telephoto zoom lenses were all on prominent display. It almost seemed more like a digital photography convention than a sports meet.
So, why all the fuss over a few kids running around? After all, this is only elementary school and the festival is really more play than serious competition. Well, the short answer is that sports, in general, are a big deal in Japan. From nationally televised high school baseball games to round the clock World Cup coverage (centering exclusively on team Nippon, naturally), sports are an inescapable aspect of Japanese life.

The reasons for this are complex to be sure and without getting too academic, we can entertain at least one easy answer: that sports and the Japanese national psyche are somehow inextricably bound. The best and perhaps most oft-cited example of this is the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, which, as summarized by film scholar Yoshikuni Igarashi, “symbolized the full acceptance of Japan back into the international community”. This healing of a wounded national identity is a process that may continue to this day, as recently asserted (warning: annoying invented terms abound) by Pop Matters staffer tjm Holden; “It is through sports that Japanese tend to measure their progress as a nation among the world of nations”.

So how does the comparatively lowly undoukai fit into all of this? Well, at the most basic level, the school sports festival can be seen as a microcosm of the international athletic competition; a small-scale reenactment of the type of event that Norma Field has cited as being “enormously effective” at promoting confusion between pride for one’s nation and nationalism. As the flags above attest, a sports festival need not actually be an international event so long as it is staged like one-the undoukai realized as an exercise in national pride on the local level. After all, every Japanese child is a potential Hideki Matsui or Nakata Hidetoshi-a fact that’s certainly on the minds of at least a few shutterbug parents as they patiently wait to line up that perfect shot.
I imagine that by this point, you’re probably anxiously asking yourself, “what actually goes on at a sports festival?” Well, the festival I attended was essentially set up as an exhibition of athletic prowess by the various grade levels. Each grade would first treat the audience to some sort of entrance performance. Here we see the third graders marching in file and swinging their arms, like all good soldiers do.

Then, they pretended to be airplanes or something?

Finally they performed a dance number. Shake it like a Polaroid picture!
After finishing their dramatic entrance, each class competed in a relay race. While there were many events in the undoukai, the relay race seemed to be the central competition of the festival.
Finally, after completing the race, a student from the grade would be presented with a flag by a representative from the school board. Following the requisite amount of cheering, the next grade would enter and the process would repeat itself.
Aside from the central events, the festival also featured a number of "wacky" events. Like the “teachers filling up empty sake bottles with water” race…
…or the tarp race. Please don’t ask me how this works because I have no idea whatsoever.
Here we see the new superintendent of Oirase Town straight chillin’ with the fine ladies who would lead the halftime show.
Before breaking for lunch, the entire school performed some sort of old lady dance, led by a group of authentic old ladies. Good thing there were so many spectators at the undoukai, I was able to slip away undetected after all.

The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground

Greetings internet denizens! Long time no see, eh? Well, after my trip to Tokyo and the requisite two weeks spent in shock at the discovery that summer still hasn’t come to Aomori, I’m about ready to return to the world of blogging. I’ve got a considerable backlog at this point, so you’ll have to bear with me while I play catch up.

While traces of humidity have been slowly creeping into the air as of late, any other signs that it is, in fact, June remain conspicuously absent. The sky continues to be obscured by a thick haze of clouds as it was throughout the winter, leaving me to ponder whether the sun ever really existed at all. Despite this fact, most farmers in the area seem to have somehow managed to successfully plant their crops for the season. Since Aomori is rice-farming country, all of the arable land in the prefecture now looks something like the picture above. Being surrounded as I am by such rice fields, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to wade through the knee-high mud as all those hunchbacked old ladies do. I intended to find out.

Inakadate, a small village just outside of Hirosaki, is a town that lives up to its name (which literally translates into something like “country place”). Like residents of many other small Japanese towns, the folks in Inakadate have come up with a few novel ideas for making the most of their surroundings. One of these is their yearly exhibition of “tambo art”; designs made using colored rice plants in two rice fields that face town hall. Every May, curious visitors are invited to join local rice planting enthusiasts in sowing the thousands of plants that will make up that year’s design. You can see this year’s proposed design, as well as a photo of last year’s spectacular tambo art on David Hammer’s blog.

The day before we arrived, David and a few other officials from Inakadate town hall painstakingly placed some thousands of tiny steaks into the mud indicating which color of rice was required in the various areas of the fields. Starting at 9:30 am, a few hundred folks waded into the cold mud and by noon, all of the rice had been planted.
Here’s some of the green rice plants that will make up the background of the design.
While the fields were mostly dominated by the sort of old Japanese men and women whose hunched backs render them instantly recognizable as career rice farmers (their presence would explain how two whole fields were planted in only two hours), there were also a number of children, families and the occasional foreigner.
The fields had been plowed beforehand with some sort of device that left raised trails in the mud. These trails were a guide for the planters, marking off the intervals at which the plants should be spaced. Planting a rice plant was as simple as making a hole in the mud with your hand, dropping the plant in and then closing up the opening. Here, David and Megan demonstrate good rice planting technique.
One out of two foreigners agree: planting rice is fun! The other 50% finds it to be thought provoking, apparently. According to one of my kindergarten teachers, Megan and I were even featured on the Aomori nightly news for our efforts although I wasn’t lucky enough to see it myself.
Afterwards, we decided to head into Hirosaki in an attempt to locate the various British miscreants who are known to haunt those parts. I had only ever seen Hirosaki castle in the dead of winter, so I figured that a second visit was well overdue.
During the warmer months, visitors can enter the 17th century structure, which now houses a museum of samurai artifacts from the defunct Tsugaru clan.
The museum occupies all three floors of the castle including the top floor, which would have once been a vantage point for archers defending the castle.

[historical reenactment]

The grounds surrounding the castle once housed a large complex of buildings in which the clan’s lords and their retainers would have lived. All that’s left nowadays is the castle and five gates, three moats, three keeps and a tower. Oh, and a lot of vending machines.

Twist And Shout

I’ve recently been using the classic game Twister a lot at my elementary school English clubs as it seems like a good way to teach words like “left,” “right,” “foot” and “hand”. Plus the kids love it, so I never have to coerce them into playing. Well, I’ve been meaning to share the box artwork from the Japanese version with you for some time now and having to use it last week jogged my famously spotty memory.

So take a glance at the cover artwork above, if you will. Let’s see, four Japanese twenty-somethings having some good clean fun with a healthy dose of sexual tension-nothing amiss, right? Look closer.
Now whose decision was it to put this dentist’s nightmare on the front of the box? Did they really think that this would help them sell more games? Quite frankly, if I were a parent at the store, I would take one look at this box and think to myself, “I had better not buy this game, it might cause my child’s teeth to become horribly misshapen and fall out”.

Oddly enough, this Twister box is actually somewhat indicative of the state of oral health in these parts. Anyone who has been to Japan can probably tell you that the archipelago is full of crooked, yellow and misshapen teeth-surprising considering Japan’s status as a major economic power. While there are certainly exceptions to this rule, most Japanese adults’ chompers would probably be considered less than healthy, at least by American dental standards. I’ve heard any number of explanations for this phenomenon: an overall poor dental care system, dentists who stress quantity of patients over quality, a lack of fluoride in toothpaste, a belief that regular checkups aren't necessary and different aesthetic values from the west (i.e. considering overlapping or crooked teeth “cute”) are all to blame, according to various sources.

Honestly though, it is a little difficult to qualify something like a set of teeth, especially when considering the average American pearly whites standard. After all, American dentistry has long been accused of being excessively cosmetic by much of the rest of the world (especially by the Brits, who are obviously sore about all of those hilarious quips we make). For what it’s worth though, I can almost guarantee that the next generation of Japanese will have ivories on par with their American counterparts. Japanese schools now require that classes brush en mass after lunch and one elementary school that I visit even screens a video, demonstrating how to brush properly, during this period. Whatever they’re doing, it seems to be working, as most of my students have beautiful teeth-much unlike their parents. After all, who wants to be the country that Great Britain looks to for a boost in self-esteem?

A Day At The Sumo Tournament

Potentially, there are a lot of negative things that you could say about Tokyo: it’s too big, too crowded, too noisy, too expensive. One thing you can’t say, however, is that there’s nothing to do. It’s essentially guaranteed that at any given time there’s something to do, see or experience in the city that will be of interest to you. Case in point: Matt and I received a text message from Megan on our last day of vacation informing us that there was a sumo tournament going on-one of only three held annually in Tokyo. Our course of action was clear.
Here we are just outside of the Kokugikan-the traditional sumo arena-located in Ryogoku, just over the Sumida River from Asakusa. Many sumo leave shortly after their bouts and can be seen close to the entrance signing autographs and such. As we were leaving, I spotted a drunken old man shouting at a group of young sumo, deriding them for wrestling with foreigners. I was hoping that one of the Sumo might eat him but they simply turned around and walked away. How very disappointing.
The interior of the arena is laid out something like a basketball stadium. That is to say, if you pay $35 for seats, you had better bring binoculars.
The ring that they wrestle in is called the dohyo, a word derived from the rice bags used to mark off different areas of the ring. You’ll notice that the structure above the ring looks very much like a Shinto shrine. That’s because the dohyo itself is actually considered sacred, hence the elaborate purification rites (throwing salt, drinking water) that sumo engage in before a match.
Here we see two sumo getting ready to engage in battle. After all of the ritual preparations have been performed, the actual match takes place, with each wrestler attempting to move his opponent outside of the ring. Normally, these matches are over in less than a minute and it’s on to the next one. Normally, I don’t have the requisite attention span for watching organized sports but I do really enjoy sumo wrestling. Go figure.
Here we see the ceremonial entrance of wrestlers from the senior division. It involves a lot of clapping and stomping (to drive away evil spirits).
And here’s the reigning Yokozuna (grand champion) making his ceremonial entrance with two attendants. You can easily recognize him from the badass lightning bolts that hang around his belt.

Well, speaking of Tokyo, I’ve got a train to catch. Updates will resume sometime late next week, if you're lucky.

Hold On To Your Pocket Protectors! We’re Going To The Bandai Museum!

Tucked away in Chiba, just east of Tokyo, is the Bandai Museum, an altar where the nerdy come to worship. Bandai is the world’s largest manufacturer of toys and also runs a visual division that’s responsible for numerous movies of the “guys in funny rubber suits” genre, as well as a lot of anime. Having heard that they had a sizeable Godzilla collection on display, Matt and I decided to investigate.

Here we see the museum’s exterior. It’s located inside of a nine-story building, just outside of Matsudo station. Apparently, the sky is always pink in Chiba. Who knew?

Here’s a Godzilla suit used in one of the later films, as well as some old movie posters. Despite what I had been told, the museum’s Godzilla collection was rather disappointingly small.

This foot was made for stomping. And that’s just what it’ll do. One of these days this foot is gonna stomp all over you.

As Bandai is a toy company, many of the exhibits were dedicated to various toys produced throughout the company’s 50 year history.

Matt faces off against…some robot guy.

Having left “Character World” feeling somewhat disappointed, I suggested that we check out the next exhibit, which was incidentally the Gundam Museum. While I was well aware that the museum was probably going to be a real dorkfest, I had heard that there was a “life-sized” Gundam on display and giant robots are admittedly pretty sweet. Also, I suspected that some of the nerdier elements in my fanbase might enjoy a walkthrough. Still, when I saw the guys ahead of us entering the museum, one of whom sported a ponytail and was videotaping everything, I couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed for all of humanity.

Here’s a Gundam’s head. I wonder how they ever managed to disembody that thing?

So here’s the strange thing about the Gundam Museum: it isn’t designed like the rest of the Bandai Museum, as an exhibition of toys and memorabilia relating to the history of the series. Rather, it’s a museum about the history of actual Gundam robots, created as if it existed within the world of Gundam. Most of the museum concerns itself with technical dissections of the history of various Gundam robots and their lineage-all of it fictional, of course (curiously enough, all of the text was in English with Japanese translations underneath). So basically, the museum is designed for people who are obsessed with Gundam as a place where they can momentarily suspend belief and immerse themselves in the world of their favorite cartoon as if it were real. Judging from the ponytail guy eagerly firing the “Gundam Gun” (just a regular bb gun painted to look futuristic), I would say that this is an important pilgrimage for many people of that particular persuasion. Above you can see Matt watching a video about how a Gundam’s foot works, or something like that. NERD!

Here’s where you can pay five bucks to put on a tight, spandex Gundam uniform and sit in a cockpit. Uh, no thanks.

Finally, pay dirt! I’ve got to say, having never seen one of these things in real life before (I’ve only been in Japan for a year, give me a break), I was pretty surprised at how huge it was.

To give you a sense of scale, here’s some dude taking a picture of the Gundam…right before it vaporized him with its laser eyes! Well, okay, not really.

What paean to consumerism would be complete without a gift shop? The minute you walk out of the Gundam Museum you’re greeted by an entire floor of Gundam model kits. I imagine that ponytail guy probably wet his pants when he saw this.

Well, that’s the Bandai Museum, in a nutshell. Please don’t tell anyone that I went there.

From The Postmodern To The Parasite: The Wonderful World Of Tokyo

Tomorrow night, I’ll find myself crammed into a child-sized seat on a coach bus for eight hours, uncomfortably making my way, yet again, down to Tokyo. Although this will mark my fifth time in the city, I still have yet to write anything of real consequence on the topic of the eastern capital. As you might recall, I copped out last time by writing about temples and the Ghibli Museum-thereby expertly avoiding mention of the elephant in the room. Which is not to say that I haven’t experienced anything blog-worthy in Tokyo; like most anyone who has visited the city, I’ve been lost in the mass of humanity that is Shibuya crossing at rush hour, I’ve waded through the garish neon of Shinjuku at night and I’ve stared out at the endless jungle of skyscrapers from the top of Tokyo Tower. At its best, Tokyo can seem so alien that it almost provides tangible evidence of the postmodern as historical moment-surely this can’t be the familiar landscape of late capitalism?

So here’s the problem: how does one approach writing about Tokyo and its 23 wards? Unlike Hiroshima, there’s no obvious historical narrative to trace. Unlike Sapporo, Tokyo is far too large to even summarize in anything short of a book. Every time I’ve sat down and tried to write about the city, I’ve found myself at a complete loss as to where to start-or where to go for that matter. So you’ll have to excuse me if I sidestep the issue at hand yet again and instead take you on a tour of a few of Tokyo’s urban curiosities, the city itself looming silently in the background all the while. Perhaps you’ll just have to see it for yourself someday.

Haven taken a bus from Kyoto, Team Gweek arrived in Tokyo just before sundown on Saturday. We immediately headed for Harajuku-the youth fashion district-for Thai food and a little wandering. Sadly, most of the team would be taking a night bus back to Aomori that very night, so our next stop was Shinjuku station (the world’s busiest) where Matt and I bid a tearful farewell to our teammates before boldly venturing off into the brisk night. And then there were two.
This time around, Matt and I chose to stay in the mostly quiet neighborhood of Asakusa, which was originally an early merchant settlement. We made the mistake (one that I will never repeat again) of staying at the Khaosan Annex-full of annoying anime nerds and lacking simple amenities like shampoo and soap. At any rate, Asakusa itself is very nice, if a little deficient in the nightlife department (which is odd considering the area’s history). Nowadays, the district is best known for the Sensoji temple complex, which I discussed at length back in April. It’s also easily recognized by this landmark:
That’s the distinctive La Flamme d’Or Building, headquarters of the Asahi Brewing Company. The giant “flame,” built by architect Philippe Starck, is meant to symbolize eternal hope and happiness. Of course, the locals simply refer to it as the kin no unko, which translates pretty literally into “the golden poop”. Did I mention that there’s a bar inside the giant dropping?
Here’s the Kamiya Bar, Tokyo’s first western-style bar, which opened its doors in the late 1880s. For some completely incomprehensible reason, they shut those same doors at 10 pm nightly and let the last customers in at 9. To hell with that.

Despite the fact that we were essentially only in Tokyo for two days, Matt and I managed to see an astonishing amount of the city. First stop: Meguro’s infamous Parasite Museum!
The only museum of its kind in the world, The Meguro Parasitological Museum houses 300 preserved specimens of various animal parasites.
My lovely assistant, Matt, demonstrates where parasites dwell in your intestinal tract.

…Heh! Heh! Racism is funny.

Here’s an 8.8 meter long tapeworm that was actually removed from some poor sap’s body after he ate a raw trout. Anyone up for sushi?
Conveniently enough, the museum provides you with an 8.8 meter long ribbon so that you can get a feel for just how long that bad boy really is. Try as we might, Matt and I couldn’t stretch it out all the way due to the fact that the room wasn’t wide enough.
After enjoying the sights of the parasite museum (and feeling like I never wanted to eat ever again), it was back to Harajuku. Renowned as Tokyo’s youth fashion hub, the area is well known for the various street performers and outrageously dressed teens who congregate there on Sundays. Unfortunately, this Sunday happened to be a bit wet, so the only thing we were able to see was an endless sea of umbrellas.
The next day, we headed out to Tsukiji, a swath of land reclaimed from Tokyo Bay in the 1700s. The neighborhood of Tsukiji has long been synonymous with the Central Wholesale Market, the largest fish market in the world. It is said that over 2000 tons of seafood change hands here on a daily basis. Incidentally, Tsukiji also enjoys a reputation as one of the best (if not the) best destinations for sushi in the world.
Chicagoans: I’ve found the sister sculpture to the "big bean" and it’s in Tsukiji, of all places.
Here we see a line of people waiting to nab a seat inside a small Tsukiji sushi shop. While we showed up well in advance of the lunchtime crowd, there were already long lines snaking through the alleyways, leading up to some of the more popular joints. Motivated by a mixture of hunger and impatience, Matt and I decided instead to enter one of the few establishments without a line-but even then we had to snag the last two seats left. While it wasn’t cheap by any means, the sushi was undoubtedly excellent. Apparently one of Matt’s teachers occasionally takes the bullet train down to Tokyo expressly for the purpose of eating sushi here.
Later in the day, we briefly visited the Imperial Palace grounds. While you can’t actually enter the inner palace (except for on New Year’s Day and the Emperor’s birthday) the outer gardens are fairly nice and, as can be expected, immaculately groomed.
The infamous Hamburger Inn, located deep in the heart of Roppongi. Back in the 1950s, a number of bars and restaurants sprung up in the area to cater to American occupation personnel from nearby bases. Roppongi is still known as a seedy den of iniquity to this day (read the fine print on the trash can below, if you don’t believe me): perhaps the only place in Tokyo where drunken foreigners and stern faced police officers are equally commonplace. Being an authentic American-style diner, the Hamburger Inn served as a gathering place for the local gaijin community for decades. Infamous professional wrestler Rikidozan is even said to have once publicly masturbated inside the restaurant as a gesture towards foreigners in Tokyo-ironic considering the fact that he himself was secretly a Korean immigrant (this and other similar anecdotes are recounted in Robert Whiting’s excellent Tokyo Underworld). Anyway, you can imagine how disappointed I was to find that the venerable Inn decided to finally shut its doors after 55 years, just a few short months before I got there.

Here we have the 100% Chocolate Café, run by Japanese chocolate and snack giant Meiji. The concept of the place is that they serve only items containing chocolate (with the exception of the requisite milk and coffee).
Their claim to fame is their 56 varieties of chocolate, each made from different kinds of cocoa beans from all over the world.
All 56 types of chocolate are displayed in glass tanks that line the walls of the restaurant.
As you can see, not only is the space exquisitely designed but there’s a real consistency of presentation to everything in the café-from the marquee right on down to the napkins. This is the work of Tokyo-based design firm Wonderwall, who I’ve since become somewhat obsessed with. I’m going to try to track down some more of their creations this weekend if I have the chance.
One really cool touch is the complimentary piece of chocolate that you’re given just for visiting-stamped with the date of your visit.

I’m going to try to clear out my blogging backlog by squeezing in two more posts before I leave tomorrow, so be sure to check back soon. Same bat time, same bat channel.