Day Two - Tokyo.
Jul. 22nd, 2009 03:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sechan19痛！
Eunja and I walked all over Marunouchi yesterday (and all over Odaiba, too).
We met up in Asakusabashi at 10am and headed to Tokyo Station to begin our walking tour. We wandered out toward the Imperial Gardens (taking a moment to note the renovation progress on the Meiji-era facade of Tokyo Station). We meandered through the East Gardens, taking in old tea houses and the foundation for the tenshu (keep) of Edo Castle (originally built by the second Tokugawa shogun, Hidetaka, in the early seventeenth century). At the tenshu the clouds parted enough for us to view the partial eclipse of the sun that was taking place so we took a number of pictures of that as well.
Even through the thick cloud cover it was way too bright, so we didn't take many and didn't look at them very closely while we did either. They might have come out kind of bogus. ;>
Done at the gardens, we had lunch in the basement of the Mainichi Shinbun building - really tasty pork katsu with a rich sesame sauce - and then headed to the Museum of Modern Art. A regular customer of Eunja's restaurant happened to work there and had given her two free passes. We first went through the Gauguin show, which featured a number of Gauguin's early works.
It was really interesting to see a Gauguin show that ran chronologically and focused on how his painting and theoretical philosophies developed. Typically, when you see a Gauguin it's some half-naked Tahitian girl, and you think about Orientalism and exoticism and concepts of the male gaze and otherness, etc. (Well, if you're me, you do.) This time I had more scope from which to consider Gauguin... where he had come from, how he got to where he ultimately ended up. Some of his early pieces were really lovely. And he actually captured more of Island life than just naked women, so good for him.
We explored the rest of the collection, which included some fantastic modern Japanese pieces, and I pulled a prank on Eunja in one of the rooms. We had just come around a corner into a gallery and there was a set of two chairs facing a completely blank wall. "Oh this is really interesting," I said (as if to myself, but loud enough for her to hear). "It's really complex, isn't it?" She turned back to the blank wall and made this classic face... like, "did I just smoke something...?" So I relented and confessed it was a joke. She scolded me.
Our feet were really dying by the time we got out (two and half hours later), so we stopped in a coffeeshop for half-an-hour to rest. Then we elected to walk back to Tokyo Station and head down to Odaiba.
When we arrived at Shinbashi, where the Odaiba monorail line (known as the Yurikamome) starts, I realized that I'd have an opportunity to visit the huge Gundum that's been erected there by Green Tokyo. (I had read about the Gundum, and had thought that visiting it would be fun, but then I forgot.) So we headed for that, and (aided by the most amazingly amusing plethora of guide-signs) found it without any difficulty whatsoever. (Seriously, though, the signs were hilarious. At the bottom of the escalators was a huge one: Gundum, this way; Fuji TV headquarters, that way, and at the head of the secondary staircase was a poster... a reproduction of the giant Gundam with a one-word tagline: "Really?" I died.)
We saw the Gundum, who was - indeed - huge, and then walked along the shoreline. There were tons of jellyfish, and jumping fish, and other signs of marine life. And the lights were beginning to shine on Rainbow Bridge. Slowly, but surely, the floating Karaoke bars were making their way to the middle of the harbor. We wandered into a department store to shop (and I bought two (TWO!) hilarious t-shirts for only ten bucks), and then got some doria for dinner. Doria is a gratin pot - some kind of melted cream sauce over meat, vegetables, and rice - baked in a oven and served piping hot. I had chicken, edamame, and cheese; Eunja had bacon, grilled eggplant, and tomato cream. Very yummy.
The sun set; we both ate in a kind of exhausted silence (it was nearly 8pm by this point). With dinner done, we called it an evening, fought our way back to Asakusabashi Station, and parted ways. I walked home, got into my jammies, cleaned up, and fell asleep before it even hit 9 o'clock.
I know, I know. Lame.
However, in all fairness, I was jetlagged (and I had woken up at 4:45), and I had been on my feet all day walking crazy distances and looking at art.
Hell, I'm still sore. I need to do some yoga before I leave because there's a good deal more walking in store for me.
Eunja and I walked all over Marunouchi yesterday (and all over Odaiba, too).
We met up in Asakusabashi at 10am and headed to Tokyo Station to begin our walking tour. We wandered out toward the Imperial Gardens (taking a moment to note the renovation progress on the Meiji-era facade of Tokyo Station). We meandered through the East Gardens, taking in old tea houses and the foundation for the tenshu (keep) of Edo Castle (originally built by the second Tokugawa shogun, Hidetaka, in the early seventeenth century). At the tenshu the clouds parted enough for us to view the partial eclipse of the sun that was taking place so we took a number of pictures of that as well.
Even through the thick cloud cover it was way too bright, so we didn't take many and didn't look at them very closely while we did either. They might have come out kind of bogus. ;>
Done at the gardens, we had lunch in the basement of the Mainichi Shinbun building - really tasty pork katsu with a rich sesame sauce - and then headed to the Museum of Modern Art. A regular customer of Eunja's restaurant happened to work there and had given her two free passes. We first went through the Gauguin show, which featured a number of Gauguin's early works.
It was really interesting to see a Gauguin show that ran chronologically and focused on how his painting and theoretical philosophies developed. Typically, when you see a Gauguin it's some half-naked Tahitian girl, and you think about Orientalism and exoticism and concepts of the male gaze and otherness, etc. (Well, if you're me, you do.) This time I had more scope from which to consider Gauguin... where he had come from, how he got to where he ultimately ended up. Some of his early pieces were really lovely. And he actually captured more of Island life than just naked women, so good for him.
We explored the rest of the collection, which included some fantastic modern Japanese pieces, and I pulled a prank on Eunja in one of the rooms. We had just come around a corner into a gallery and there was a set of two chairs facing a completely blank wall. "Oh this is really interesting," I said (as if to myself, but loud enough for her to hear). "It's really complex, isn't it?" She turned back to the blank wall and made this classic face... like, "did I just smoke something...?" So I relented and confessed it was a joke. She scolded me.
Our feet were really dying by the time we got out (two and half hours later), so we stopped in a coffeeshop for half-an-hour to rest. Then we elected to walk back to Tokyo Station and head down to Odaiba.
When we arrived at Shinbashi, where the Odaiba monorail line (known as the Yurikamome) starts, I realized that I'd have an opportunity to visit the huge Gundum that's been erected there by Green Tokyo. (I had read about the Gundum, and had thought that visiting it would be fun, but then I forgot.) So we headed for that, and (aided by the most amazingly amusing plethora of guide-signs) found it without any difficulty whatsoever. (Seriously, though, the signs were hilarious. At the bottom of the escalators was a huge one: Gundum, this way; Fuji TV headquarters, that way, and at the head of the secondary staircase was a poster... a reproduction of the giant Gundam with a one-word tagline: "Really?" I died.)
We saw the Gundum, who was - indeed - huge, and then walked along the shoreline. There were tons of jellyfish, and jumping fish, and other signs of marine life. And the lights were beginning to shine on Rainbow Bridge. Slowly, but surely, the floating Karaoke bars were making their way to the middle of the harbor. We wandered into a department store to shop (and I bought two (TWO!) hilarious t-shirts for only ten bucks), and then got some doria for dinner. Doria is a gratin pot - some kind of melted cream sauce over meat, vegetables, and rice - baked in a oven and served piping hot. I had chicken, edamame, and cheese; Eunja had bacon, grilled eggplant, and tomato cream. Very yummy.
The sun set; we both ate in a kind of exhausted silence (it was nearly 8pm by this point). With dinner done, we called it an evening, fought our way back to Asakusabashi Station, and parted ways. I walked home, got into my jammies, cleaned up, and fell asleep before it even hit 9 o'clock.
I know, I know. Lame.
However, in all fairness, I was jetlagged (and I had woken up at 4:45), and I had been on my feet all day walking crazy distances and looking at art.
Hell, I'm still sore. I need to do some yoga before I leave because there's a good deal more walking in store for me.
