Tokyo - Golden Week Part 1
May. 28th, 2007 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blacklillyAt 3.30pm it started to get dark – a gradual turn from daylight so bright you winced, to a gloomth that sucked the light from the buildings. I looked west out the 9th floor window of my hotel room and saw the approaching clouds. Grey-black and almost bruise-yellow in places, they created a sickly contrast with the pinkish smog tone of the sky to the east.
A lightning fork viewed through two buildings and suddenly the wind picked up, pushing bags and leaves through the air. Wind battered crows battled to find a roost on rooftops, their feathers splayed into scarecrow digits. And the clouds pressed on like sky-lava, unabating in their approach. More lightening tore across the sky, followed by a low thunder still too distant to make me flinch.
And finally the rain came, falling like liquid metal in the peculiar storm light, its silver bodies rattling against windows, shattering rooftop puddles into an algaed chaos. From high up, Tokyo blinked on it its resolute stand against nature. The buildings reflected each lightning fork in their thousand eyes, staring nonchalantly ahead.
This was my first afternoon in Tokyo. Angela Carter wrote in ‘A Souvenir of Japan’: “If you plan to come and live in Japan, you must be sure you are stoical enough to endure the weather.” Coming to Tokyo is always testing – no matter what time of year, no matter the temperature, I always feel closed in by humidity – though it may well be a symptom of the mild fear I get being surrounded by so many people and so much noise. Over the coming Golden Week and beyond, I’d meet my fair share of weather.
One of my favourite places in Tokyo is Harajuku. It’s a cross between Brighton and Camden, so I feel quite at home wandering about there, though hideously underdressed. Harajuku is hip and young, and I am most certainly not the former, and daily becoming less of the latter. I took my family to see the Meiji Shrine. In a rare case of good timing our visit coincided with the Spring Festival where we witnessed bugaku, an ancient and eerie form of Chinese court music accompanied by restrained dancing. We walked about for a while, caught a Shinto-style wedding, and then wandered up to Omotesando Hills to check out the interesting architecture of the place. Later that day we headed back to Shinjuku and met up with my friends Yusuke and Chihoko for dinner in an izakaiya and on to initiate my brother in the ways of karaoke. He didn’t do too badly at all, I must confess.
The next day we headed out for a fun day in Hakone. Hakone is a tourist-mecca for viewing Mount Fuji, and we were lucky that the weather was accommodating enough for a rather splendid view of the mountain. Travelling around Hakone is probably the most fun – a combination of train, a funicular railway that switchbacks up the hill, then a cable car to Owakudani where we samples hot spring eggs – eggs boiled in sulphuric spring water which turns the shells black. We took a coach down from the springs and then hopped on one of the more unusual methods of traversing a lake – a mock pirate ship. Then back on a bus and a train back home.
That night we went to the Park Hyatt Tokyo to do the “Lost in Translation” experience. Paying 2000yen (about £10) for a cocktail is not normally something I indulge in, but the view out of the 54th floor bar is worth breaking the bank for, especially when a jazz band accompanies it. I was against the idea of eating there, having looked at the bar menu prices.
“ I’m hungry,” my mother said. “ Where will we get something to eat?”
“ There’s McDonald’s over the road,” my brother suggested. The look of disgust on my face put that idea to bed. There was silence for a while as we drank our expensive cocktails.
“ How about I pay for dinner?” Mother said.
“ OK,” my brother and I replied, a little too quickly. I kept the receipt for dinner, as proof of the most expensive meal I’ve ever had.
The next day I woke up feeling decidedly worse for wear. Expensive wine gives you expensive headaches. The weather was also foul – that nasty kind of rain that hangs around all day and manages to creep inside your clothes. We went to Ikebukuro to check out Sunshine City – one of the most disorientating shopping centres I’ve ever been to. The place is HUGE. After wandering about the shops we eventually got to the aquarium and hung about cooing at fish and jellyfish. I found some weird little critters, and had a chat with an octopus about the alignment of stars and whether he could decipher various portents I’ve taken note of lately. He was very cagey though, and eventually went back to sleep after my questions began to bore him.
The next day we went to Nagano – an excellent excuse to take the shinkansen – and met up with Yasuko and her sister Kumi (who is kawaii) for a jaunt in the dark beneath the Zenkoji temple in an attempt to get into paradise. We ate soba and I bought some oyaki – little doughy parcels filled with anko (sweet red beans - oishii), meat or vegetables - as well as a couple of very pretty kaleidoscopes to play with. Later, Yasuko drove us out to the mountains to check out a park full of lilies. We checked out a very old temple up in the mountains and put us back on the train. Yasuko, I hear second-hand, thinks my brother in handsome. I will have to take her to get her eyes, and her sanity, checked.
I cycled around Tokyo with Saya and her friend Junko the following day, but that's a story for the next installment...
A lightning fork viewed through two buildings and suddenly the wind picked up, pushing bags and leaves through the air. Wind battered crows battled to find a roost on rooftops, their feathers splayed into scarecrow digits. And the clouds pressed on like sky-lava, unabating in their approach. More lightening tore across the sky, followed by a low thunder still too distant to make me flinch.
And finally the rain came, falling like liquid metal in the peculiar storm light, its silver bodies rattling against windows, shattering rooftop puddles into an algaed chaos. From high up, Tokyo blinked on it its resolute stand against nature. The buildings reflected each lightning fork in their thousand eyes, staring nonchalantly ahead.
This was my first afternoon in Tokyo. Angela Carter wrote in ‘A Souvenir of Japan’: “If you plan to come and live in Japan, you must be sure you are stoical enough to endure the weather.” Coming to Tokyo is always testing – no matter what time of year, no matter the temperature, I always feel closed in by humidity – though it may well be a symptom of the mild fear I get being surrounded by so many people and so much noise. Over the coming Golden Week and beyond, I’d meet my fair share of weather.
One of my favourite places in Tokyo is Harajuku. It’s a cross between Brighton and Camden, so I feel quite at home wandering about there, though hideously underdressed. Harajuku is hip and young, and I am most certainly not the former, and daily becoming less of the latter. I took my family to see the Meiji Shrine. In a rare case of good timing our visit coincided with the Spring Festival where we witnessed bugaku, an ancient and eerie form of Chinese court music accompanied by restrained dancing. We walked about for a while, caught a Shinto-style wedding, and then wandered up to Omotesando Hills to check out the interesting architecture of the place. Later that day we headed back to Shinjuku and met up with my friends Yusuke and Chihoko for dinner in an izakaiya and on to initiate my brother in the ways of karaoke. He didn’t do too badly at all, I must confess.
The next day we headed out for a fun day in Hakone. Hakone is a tourist-mecca for viewing Mount Fuji, and we were lucky that the weather was accommodating enough for a rather splendid view of the mountain. Travelling around Hakone is probably the most fun – a combination of train, a funicular railway that switchbacks up the hill, then a cable car to Owakudani where we samples hot spring eggs – eggs boiled in sulphuric spring water which turns the shells black. We took a coach down from the springs and then hopped on one of the more unusual methods of traversing a lake – a mock pirate ship. Then back on a bus and a train back home.
That night we went to the Park Hyatt Tokyo to do the “Lost in Translation” experience. Paying 2000yen (about £10) for a cocktail is not normally something I indulge in, but the view out of the 54th floor bar is worth breaking the bank for, especially when a jazz band accompanies it. I was against the idea of eating there, having looked at the bar menu prices.
“ I’m hungry,” my mother said. “ Where will we get something to eat?”
“ There’s McDonald’s over the road,” my brother suggested. The look of disgust on my face put that idea to bed. There was silence for a while as we drank our expensive cocktails.
“ How about I pay for dinner?” Mother said.
“ OK,” my brother and I replied, a little too quickly. I kept the receipt for dinner, as proof of the most expensive meal I’ve ever had.
The next day I woke up feeling decidedly worse for wear. Expensive wine gives you expensive headaches. The weather was also foul – that nasty kind of rain that hangs around all day and manages to creep inside your clothes. We went to Ikebukuro to check out Sunshine City – one of the most disorientating shopping centres I’ve ever been to. The place is HUGE. After wandering about the shops we eventually got to the aquarium and hung about cooing at fish and jellyfish. I found some weird little critters, and had a chat with an octopus about the alignment of stars and whether he could decipher various portents I’ve taken note of lately. He was very cagey though, and eventually went back to sleep after my questions began to bore him.
The next day we went to Nagano – an excellent excuse to take the shinkansen – and met up with Yasuko and her sister Kumi (who is kawaii) for a jaunt in the dark beneath the Zenkoji temple in an attempt to get into paradise. We ate soba and I bought some oyaki – little doughy parcels filled with anko (sweet red beans - oishii), meat or vegetables - as well as a couple of very pretty kaleidoscopes to play with. Later, Yasuko drove us out to the mountains to check out a park full of lilies. We checked out a very old temple up in the mountains and put us back on the train. Yasuko, I hear second-hand, thinks my brother in handsome. I will have to take her to get her eyes, and her sanity, checked.
I cycled around Tokyo with Saya and her friend Junko the following day, but that's a story for the next installment...
