I had an inauspicious start to the day, but it’s Monday after all. The upstairs elephants were stomping around all night and I didn’t sleep that well. Then it was time to pay a huge credit card bill that included:

• plane fare to Japan for me, my mom, and my sister
• my Tokyo hotel that turned out to be more expensive than I first thought
• plane fare to Busan for three
• other various and sundry travel fees

Basically I emptied out one account and wanted to move money around other accounts. None of my banks make that easy. Bank of America was being pretty painful PLUS they have some sort of new security thing that requires you to set a cell phone to send text messages to. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let me do it because my ATM card doesn’t have a security code and the web form seems t think everything is a credit card.

I tried calling the bank. All the toll-free numbers they gave me didn’t work. No one knew how to make a collect call from Japan. I finally broke down and called the US direct but was on hold so long that I got nervous and hung up. I tried to get Google voice working but after trying several different browsers I gave up. I finally bought Skype credit only to find out that my huge bank, B of A, doesn’t answer the phones on holiday weekends.

Of course, Google Voice finally started working and now I can call the US for free. I spent a bunch of money calling my mom before I figured that one out.

So it was noon by the time I was able to leave and I was in a mood. As soon as I got outside, I noticed that the road in front of the hotel – the one that goes through Korea Town – was blocked off and there was a parade going on.

There was even a marching band.

I figured I might as well try to catch up to the band, which wasn’t easy with the crowded sidewalks.

This is right in front of Shin-Okubo station, where I needed to catch the train anyway if I didn’t want to transfer at Yoyogi Station.

I decided to go to another one of the restaurants my sister suggested, at Ebisu Station.

I know going to another restaurant recommended by my sister is dangerous and foolish but Blacow is a hamburger restaurant that has a butcher shop inside and was mentioned in a blog that sent me to Fatz’s earlier in the trip.

I get the feeling that Ebisu is a bit fancier neighborhood than I’ve been walking through. It was quiet and there were good looking restaurants that sat empty.

I was given direction by a guy with a “Lebron Who?” shirt who was from Cleveland but has been in Japan for a year working as a lawyer.

There was a line to get in to Blacow when I first got there, but I figured I had to try it now.

It says deck out OK, which means you get to design your own burger.

Sure enough, they had a butcher shop inside and a list of where the meat came from.

And here’s my ¥1,750 ($22.38USD) burger. Japanese hamburger can have a funny taste like they mix in some sort of pork and this was that way. This is a good burger, but I have to say Fatz’s beats it.

I went back towards Ebisu Station because… Ebisu Station is named after the old Ebisu Beer factory.

This is neither here nor there but for my sister. It said Toyoko Inn Development Company.

There were performers here and activities for the kids all over because it’s a national holiday, Health and Sports Day.

This isn’t what I was looking for.

This is closer, as it’s the Sapporo Beer building and if you follow what looks like an alleyway to the right…

The Museum of Yebisu beer!

I don’t thing this is operational.

For ¥500 you get a “tour” which consists of 10 minutes of history and 10 minutes of DRINKING TWO (tiny) beers!

And a tiny bag of Japanese beer nuts.

Or are they peas? Or beans?

Beer number 1, standard Yebisu beer.

Beer number 2, the seasonal fall beer.

They also told us to pour the beer certain way. First you pour it straight down the middle to get the carbonation out.

When the carbonation settles and the glass is half-full, pour in more slowly.

Here’s a picture of the special logo that is only on a small percentage of bottle and cans.

Well, I don’t know what this building is.

I thought it was the Tokyo Museum of Photography, but that was down a hallway to the right. I thought it would be fitting that I took a photograph of the Museum of Photography.

The whole complex is kind of fancy and has a Mitsukoshi department store.

I decided to walk a ways towards the hotel. Another odd thing in Ebisu was a Mos Cafe that looked full of LPs.

I followed a small side street towards Shibuya and saw some police vans doing who-knows-what?

And the brand new Langlitz Leathers Tokyo on the same side street, full of old leather jackets.  I have a couple of Langlitz jackets at home.

I couldn’t help myself and took a picture of Chosenji Temple near Harajuku.

And I don’t know if this is the oddest sign of the day.

Or if this is the oddest sign of the day.

Near Harajuku was a mystery train station that one street sign said was for the use of the Imperial family.

And I stuck to the back streets just for fun. This street appeared to have apartments and little else (the blown out sign says “Japan Physical Therapy Association”) but there were odd mini-art galleries in amongst the buildings.

I walked up to a bookstore and then walked back to the Yoyogi train station. I got back to the hotel and fell asleep in a chair and then it was time for dinner from Tesco. So the day ended up much better than it started. Let’s hope tomorrow is better.

So apparently an elephant is now in the room above me. A nocturnal elephant who stomps around while I’m trying to sleep. And since the cast of “Thriller” from the UK is also in the hotel, there was some late night shrieking going on in the halls as well.

My lack of sleep plus the rain in the morning meant it was a good morning to rest up and sit around the room. I finally got going around noon and the rain had cleared up and I thought I’d go hang around Shinjuku station again. I forgot what a zoo it is, especially on the weekends, especially on a three-day weekend.

So I haven’t seen godzilla, but I did see a giant mechanical crab.

My first stop was lunch. I figured I’d try the curry place, Nakamura-ya, that my sister asked me to find. It’s now in a temporary building and there’s a faceless elevator leading up to the sixth floor where it is. Unlike most restaurants, there was no indication of what they were serving. Well, leave it to my sister to lead me to a place where the lunch set is not a bargain but a ¥2,625 curry. Yes, that’s about $33.40 at today’s exchange rate.

But what the heck, I’ve never had a $33.40 curry before. It started out with an appetizer plate.

Two kinds of curry (I picked seafood and regular, there was also Japanese beef hayashi rice).

And a drink is included. I picked “Indian tea” or chai if you’re in Portland.

So, was it worth ¥2,625? I’m not sure. It was tasty and well done but I think the curry at the not-that-great Indian restaurant was better.

I also decided to see the Hanazono Jinja, and maybe get some manju as well. I forgot about the manju. The shrine is tucked in between buildings in Shinjuku.

The entrance to the shrine looked like the side entrance, and it was.

Here’s the inside of the main gate. I didn’t take a picture from the outside.

Here’s a the main shrine.

Every Sunday there’s a flea market on the temple grounds. There’s guys selling old stuff that I’ve given to Goodwill and some other stuff that might be interesting but really, the same class of stuff that I don’t really need.

There was also a second small temple on the grounds.

After that went to get some maps at the tourist bureau and was going to head back to Shinjuku to buy some books for studying Japanese, but the ¥2,625 curry or the chai didn’t agree with me and I had to head back to the hotel. I found a back street back just to be different.

And that was about it for the day. I had a cheap dinner from the Tesco and that’s it for today.

I just hope the elephant upstairs has a quiet night.

Another photo-heavy post. If you get the feeling you’re just looking at someone’s travel pictures (and you are) just scroll faster. At least it’s not a slide show. Also, as I see more of the pictures, I realize my camera skills are way below what they used to be (if they were as good as I remember). You can go take your own pictures if you want. These are just tourist pictures.

I’m surprised I took so many pictures today. The main point of the day was to meet my cousin’s kids for the first time since I saw them when they visited me. Kota went to Tokyo Institute of Technology and got his Masters Degree and he and I are more alike than we should be for being first cousins once removed (basically, my mom’s sister’s kid’s kid.) He’s been working long hours at Yahoo Japan and I haven’t seen him for fourteen years, I think. His sister I haven’t seen for ten years and she’s working at a mysterious clothing design company, I think (my mom and my aunt can never get it straight so my sister and I are both wondering what it is). They’re both from the same small town in Yamaguchi Prefecture where my aunt lives but they’re both in Tokyo now.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I decided it would be a good day to visit the last section of Shinjuku, at least the last section I had a separate map for, Ushigome. It’s in the far eastern corner of the city of Shinjuku.

I walked to Ushigome, which isn’t as far as I went for dinner last night. But it does take me the same direction as I’ve been before, past the road to the Aikido Hombu, and right past the place where Five-O got all up in my grill.

One of the first things I stumbled across (and I’ve been by here before) is a temple right next to a subway station. The corrugated roof is a subway entrance and the wooden gate is to the temple.

Here’s the gate to the Kyoouji Temple.

Not too far off is where I was hassled by the Man. Looks like they’re bored again today, looking for something to do.

The first thing I found out is that this map shows some of the more boring routes through Shinjuku. At least in the center of the map. But it started off promising with the former site of Kondo Isami’s Shiekan, where they taught martial arts with the sword, staff, and also unarmed.

But then it was a slog through a bunch of city streets. There’s an interesting microwave tower to break the monotony.

And, when I got lost, a weird bulbous concrete house.

As I got further east in Shinjuku, the streets got hillier and more industrial around an area of Dai Nippon Printing.

But the road finally got me away from the industrial area.

And finally to some shrines. Here’s Chanoki-inari Jinja.

Continuing up the steps leads to Ichigaya-kamegaoka-hachimangu Shrine.

Looks like they’re setting up for a festival.

There were several sub-shrines as well.

Here’s a small shrine on the stairs between the larger shrines.

On my way down, I noticed the lower shrine had another shrine behind it.

But I needed to pay attention because the stairs were quite steep.

Right around the corner was Doun-ji Temple.

And almost next door was what I think is Chotai-zenji Zen temple. If you keep going you just end up to the entrance to the Ministry of Defense.

I stopped for lunch at Mos Burger because I haven’t had enough burgers lately (hah).

They did have a new special burger from Hokkaido, I think.

I should have known better, but I kept following the map through the neighborhoods. Shrines that aren’t named on the map can be quite tiny, like this one next to the French-Japanese Institute of Tokyo.

Next stop was Miyagi Michio Memorial Hall, a Japanese composer.

I believe this is the Miyagi Michio concert hall next to his museum.

Harder to find was the former residence of author Ozaki Koyo. It was down a path and I’m not sure if it’s the house of the outbuilding to the left.

Nearby are Jonen-ji.

And Enpuku-ji?

Shozo-in?

Seriously, there’s a whole street of temples in an area called Yokotera-machi and I couldn’t keep them straight.

Here’s a placard to Shimamura Hogetsu’s place of death (remains of the artist’s club) and it’s just a placard.

Maybe this one is Shozo-in?

Anyo-ji?

Most of the area I went to see is old alleyways with restaurants but there are a couple of larger shrines nearby. This is the gate to Akagi-jinja.

Another able where you can see the shrine in the distance.

The shrine itself that I didn’t really want to approach at first.

It’s hard to see, but there was a wedding going on inside.

I got a picture of the bride and groom coming out.

And another of the bridal party getting ready to take a group photo.

The main road through the area is Kagurazaka-dori.

It’s on a hill in the neighborhood.

On the main road is Zenkoku-ji temple.

It’s pretty busy compared to the other temples.

Right now I’m standing amongst a group of people drawing watercolors of the gate.

Here’s the first of the pictures of the alleyways. This is a bar and that sign above the door is about head-high for me so it’s a tiny door.

This is right around the corner. The signs are restaurants.

A wider back alley.

This alleyway also has homes.

And of course, some of the alleyways have stairs.

Just past the shopping area, across a busy street is Tsukudo-hachiman Jinja. It’s supposed to have the oldest stone gate in Shinjuku, but I’m not sure which one it was. This one?

Or this one in the middle of the staircase?

Or this tiny one in front of a secondary shrine?

Kagurazaka-wakamiya-hachiman jinja is closer to the shopping area and very near Tokyo University of Science. I didn’t take any pictures of the school, or it’s odd museum which looked a little like the old computer museum at Powell’s Technical books just with lots more Japanese computers. And dozens of mechanical adding machines, too.

And another tiny unlabeled (on the map) shrine.

At this point I was getting lost trying to deicde how to go back to the hotel before dinner. For that reason, I have no idea what temple this is.

I made it to the train, and back to the hotel. We met in Harajuku and I was standing at the wrong exit. Both exits appear to be on the same side of the station. The one I was standing at lead to Takeshita street which was packed full of yoots.

My sister reminded me to take a picture of my cousins, so this is it. I spent most of the time talking.

But I did have a frozen beer! The foam is frozen to keep the beer cold.

And I forgot to take pictures of dinner except for this plate. Everthing was on the skewers, but we were in the middle of deskewering things.

And that’s about it for the day.

Today I met James Skinner, an old high school buddy who reminded me that we met at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) summer camp when we were in third grade. We’ve known each other forever and he’s done quite well for himself. His story is his story, so I’ll just say I think he’s got a whole big pile of money (he managed a hedge fund for a few years) and he’s met the Emperor of Japan. I haven’t seen him since high school so we had a lot to talk about. I could tell he’s still the guy I remember from high school but his huge run of success has sharpened his focus. He doesn’t have the conversational ADD that I have. Plus, listening to his stories (and where we were having lunch) were making me a little nervous.

I can’t remember what I did this morning besides updating yesterday’s blog entry with descriptions. I was meeting Jim at the Roppongi Grand Hyatt and I knew I’d better dress better than I usually do. I put on a real shirt (the one I usually bring to Japan “just in case” but have never needed until this trip) and headed for Roppongi.

I had the porcini salad for lunch. It was tasty. It was certainly better than the Calorie Mate and vending machine tea I usually have while I’m walking all over the place.

We spent two hours catching up and he’s got great stories of what he’s been doing since high school. He lives somewhere I can’t remember near Roppongi and in Singapore.

I tried walking around the Roppongi area but I started to get the feeling that these weren’t normal rich people. These were people with more money than I can imagine, which is pretty easy because I can’t imagine a whole lot of money. At least not money of mine. Anyway, I started getting nervous and just got the heck out of dodge. The only picture I took is of the Tokyo Tower. I was afraid that if I annoyed the wrong person that they’d just disappear me.

Jim was telling me that he generally only eats vegetable juice and protein shakes and we talked about the paleo diet for a while. That just made me hungry for cake so I tried the place across the street from the hotel. The cake was tasty but the coffee was kind of nasty. Not that I wouldn’t go back, but the clientele seemed kind of coarse. Coarse I can deal with.

I spent a bunch of the afternoon paying bills and still was feeling weird about some of the events of the week (the cop, Roppongi, etc). I also didn’t do much walking today so I decided to walk to Fatz’s Burger which is a little over an hour away.

It’s starting to get dark early but it was still humid and fairly warm. But a walk is a walk and I found out that my cameras actually took pictures in the dark. Like this one of “Hair Salon Jedi”.

Of course I got lost again and I went walking through the neighborhoods. At least some of the streets were straight and easy to follow.

Here’s a picture of a Tokyo street near Koenji, Kannaana Dori.

It was an interesting walk and I made it to Fatz’s and took the worst picture of the day of a tasty burger. Even the Costco IPA was pretty good. And I talked the owner’s ear off while he was trying to watch a rebroadcast of an NFL football game.

Tomorrow I’m having dinner with my cousin’s kids. That should be fun, too.

UPDATED

It takes me a surprisingly long time to sort the photos from two sources and to remember whatever the hell I did in the heat of day, wandering around Tokyo, and I just got back from meeting my old co-worker Suzuki-san (whose picture I forgot to take) and it’s 11:13PM. Comments are coming tomorrow. Pictures are below if you want to make up your own captions. They should be updated by Thursday evening (if I’m getting my time zone corrections right).

—–

I’m going to write this like it was last night, so the timing is going to sound funny. Or not, we’ll see.

OK, here we go. I was trying to decide where to go and since Kevin my scary black belt next door neighbor asked me to check out the main headquarters of his branch of Aikido. If you’ve ever met Kevin, you’ll know I’m kidding as he’s a super friendly and nice guy. Honestly I was trying to figure out what to do for the day and the headquarters was only 1.3 miles away according to Google Maps.

I should go on a rant about effing Google maps on my iPhone which is only slightly less crappy than the Maps application on the iPhone, but I won’t. I’m glad I’m in Japan and have generally known where I was going otherwise I’d be lost and dead by now.

Anyway, for some reason I thought I’d take pictures of the 1.3 miles to the Aikido HQ since it was very near where Five-0 was hassling me the other day.

First is heading out of the hotel, towards the rail station, through Korea town. That green bridge is actually the JR train overpass.

Things get a little more busy between the two train stations, Okubo and Shin-Okubo. Once again, you can see the train overpass in the distance, painted in green.

But Korea Town doesn’t get interesting until you get past Shin-Okubo station. It’s really busy, I don’t recognize much of the food, and a lot of the time people aren’t speaking a language I understand.

Past Korea Town is East Shinjuku, where my mom’s friend lived and where the 44.6m high “mountain” is located. I’ve been here a few times if you remember all the pictures. The hill is to the left and the path to my mom’s friend’s old house is right by that brick building on the right.

The directions looked pretty clear, but you veered off the main street into the neighborhood.

Up some steep slopes only to go back down.

I think the green painted sides mean this is a heavily travelled street and that’s what passes for a sidewalk.

Time for a side-trip to another temple.

Just as an aside, most of the Korean people I know are really Christian and Korea Town is full of Christian churches.

I think most of the reason for all the temples is the graveyards. With so many people living in Tokyo, there have to be a lot of graveyards.

Like this.

Back on the path to the Aikido HQ and I had to take a detour past an apartment building.

I’m almost there.

And here it is! At first I had misgivings because that gold car is a bedazzled Mercedes-Benz. Rhinestones all over as accents. I only thing gangsters can pull that off.

A view from the other side.

I really didn’t have any business there, so I went in, looked at the books they had for sale in the lobby, and bought Kevin a t-shirt. Kevin’s not a tiny guy so I’m not sure a Japanese XL is going to fit him, but I had to try.

After all that, I figured instead of the direct route, I’d see if there was a “easy route” that didn’t take me through all the twists and turns of the neighborhood. Looking down the road opposed the way I came, it looked like there was a busy road. When I got to the busy road you can see a sign on the pole for “Aikido Hombu Dojo”.

And here’s a view of the road.

Unsurprisingly, the busy road lead to a BUSIER road.

Where I saw but didn’t get hassled by the Man. (Seriously, there were several riot buses going by. I’m not sure what was going on.)

It was actually hot as balls so I headed back to the hotel to change into shorts. It was lunch time so I got some rice balls and karaage chicken from the Tesco and I’m sure it has to be awful for me because it was tasty.

I headed back to the last section of Shinjuku that I hadn’t been to.

Every night I’ve heard fire engines and ambulances go by and I wondered why. Turns out the main Shinjuku fire station is only three or four blocks down the road.

And it’s not a tiny fire station.

I got the tourist map of Ochiai out and the first shrine I saw was closed!

It’s also used as a pre-school and the kids wet out playing in the courtyard.

No matter, onto the Some-no Sato Futaba-en, a Shinjuku mini-museum of fabric dyeing.

The main window is to the left of the path.

From another angle, here’s the brushes and bottles for dye.

I snuck some pictures of the inside shop.

There’s even an area where you can sit and have coffee.

Onto a real museum, the Hayashi Fumiko Memorial Hall.

I don’t know who she is, so I didn’t go in.

I also passed the Mejiro Gakuen ruins, because they’re on the grounds of a college and the museum was about to close.

This is a shrine that I don’t remember seeing on the map.

The shrine itself.

But I did finally take a picture of the inside of a shrine.

Nakai Shusse Fudo do is on the map and has an old statue that’s only on display once a month. I couldn’t see a thing.

I got more and more into commercial areas with stores and shops and found Jisho-In

The temple itself didn’t look all that interesting.

But it’s the place where the beckoning cat (maneki neko) you see a lot of stores was first seen. According to the guide map, “… Ota Dokan lost his way in the midst of the battle but made a narrow escape for death beckoned by a black cat.”

It was getting close to 5PM and I was meeting my friend and old co-worker Suzuki-san for dinner. But Hobby Center Kato beckoned me and was only a short distance away. It turned out to be a model railroad company’s showroom. I didn’t want to take pictures inside (though I could have asked) but there were hundreds and hundreds of model trains. Not just all the variants of the trains seen throughout Japan, but American locomotives as well! BN, BNSF, SF, UP, if you’re from the west coast you know what those mean.

It was a bit of a hike back to the hotel, but very close to “home” I found the Metropolitan Central Wholesale Yodobashi Market. Funny how you don’t see things that are close by if you only go one direction.

I met Suzuki-san at Nakano Station since we figured it would be easier than trying to find each other at Shinjuku again. As we usually do, we wandered around looking for a place to eat. We finally settled on a fish restaurant that looked good. There’s a giant grill in the middle of the room with seats around it.

Katsuo sashimi.

Hairy crab.

Some kind of teriyaki.

I forgot to take pictures of the grilled sanma I devoured.

And here’s the final GIANT rice ball, tea and miso soup.

We had coffee at a family restaurant before heading off.

Like I said, I forgot to take a picture of Suzuki-san. His hair is shorter, but he looks like he always did. 🙂

Now I’m off (the next day) to see a friend from high school who seems to write “how to get rich” books in Japan. I think how you get rich is to write the books and have people pay for your seminars. I’ll have to ask him.

Today was supposed to be a rainy day (another Typhoon is on its way) and I really wanted to just sit in my room. My cough is mostly gone but it comes back at inopportune times, like when I’m trying to sleep. I had to get up and sleep sitting up on the couch for a while again. I had to drag myself out of bed again.

But it’s Wednesday and even thought I’d really like to spend a day sitting on my ass, it was time to get out of the room and let the cleaning crew do their weekly thing. So I decided to go to a neighborhood that looked a bit boring in the “Welcome to Tokyo Handy Guide” and that my mom told me was kind of in the middle of nowhere, at least historically. Since the Japanese tend to do things in a group, maybe everyone thinks Ikebukuro is boring. Even the guy at the front desk had a funny look on his face when I asked about Ikebukuro. But the aquarium is new and he did think it looked better than the one in Shinagawa, at least when he checked on the intarwebs. There’s a building complex called Sunshine City with theaters and shops and the newly rebuilt aquarium.

When I first got there I noticed Ikebukuro was full of tall buildings but wasn’t very crowded.

I figured I’d try heading away front the station and Sunshine City and should try finding the Zohshigaya Kishimojindo temple while it wasn’t raining. Getting off the main roads got me away from the big buildings and it was temple time again.

First there was the usual construction. There’s always a guard on the sidewalk keeping things safe. There’s one on the other side as well.

This temple was on the other side of the construction and I’m not even sure which one this is.

But just around the corder was Zohshigaya Kinshimojindo and it was giant compared to all the rest of the temples I’ve seen the past two days.

On the grounds of the temple is also a shrine with lots of gates.

Looking from the shrine itself, you can see how many gates there are.

The shrine itself was small compared to the temple and I didn’t take a picture. Oddly enough, the Tokyo Government listed this tree as a Natural Monument and the sign mentions this without saying much about the temple or shrine.

Here’s the temple that is said to bring luck for fertility and childbearing. I could swear I had a better picture than this. I try not to take pictures of the insides of temples, just because.

Walking back towards Sunshine City, I saw this shrine just around the corner.

And right next to it, another temple.

And, the Tokyo College of Music.

And while it looks far away, Sunshine City isn’t that far away. That smaller looking building to the left with the funny top is the Toyota showroom.

The tram line from yesterday runs right through this area.

 

Not real sure why I took this picture. I just liked the huge sign.

I wandered around Sunshine City and saw something called Namco Namjatown, but it didn’t look that interesting from the outside. There was also a planetarium that I didn’t go to next to the aquarium.

I only spent an hour in the aquarium but I really enjoyed myself. All sorts of things I’ve never seen. They had a sunfish and tiny jellyfish and all sorts of fish from large sharks to tiny transparent fish and weird ghost/angel-like jellyfish. I didn’t take any pictures because there are much better pictures on the intarwebs. But I did take a picture of a very Japanese looking set of sea anemones and corals that looked like underwater bonsai.

I definitely think the aquarium was worth ¥1,800 and if I liked sea lions and otters more I would have stayed for the show.

I was finally able to get soba because I found a restaurant at the bottom of Sunshine City that actually let you pay for things without having to buy tickets.

Afterwards I went to the post office to see if I could get money from my US account. Turns out I just got a slip of paper that says YOU HAVE EXCEED YOUR WITHDRAWAL LIMITS and the post office guy said that meant I didn’t have enough money in my account. I’ll have to figure out what the hell that’s about.

It was rainy and it’s Wednesday so I figured I’d let my intarweb friend bully me into trying Steak House Sato. Turns out it wasn’t that hard to find. The stairs were narrow and steep and sure enough, the tables only seat ten and there’s a counter with six more seats. But it turns out it isn’t that busy during the week. I think they get a lot of foreigners because the menu is in Japanese and English.

When I got there there was only one other couple. Then another single came in, and afterwards three women on vacation from the Philippines.

They show you the meat before they cook it and he asked if I wanted to take a picture. There is no connective tissue in that cut. There was nothing that wasn’t easy to chew.

The kitchen is tiny, and sometimes there are four chefs working back there.

See? Four. My steak is cooking under the copper lid.

I wish I could have taken a better picture of the steak, but I was just ready to try it. OH MY GOD IT WAS WORTH EVERY BIT OF THE ¥10,000 I PAID FOR IT. Like I said, there was no connective tissue so there was nothing that got stuck in my teeth. That must have been one lazy-ass cow to have all that fat and boy it was tasty. Every piece had a little chewiness at the same time was almost creamy in its texture.

The carrot looks woody but it wasn’t woody nor overcooked. The little brown things to the left were fried garlic and were perfectly crisp. Seriously, there was a lot of attention paid to all parts of my steak dinner which also came with miso soup and rice.

So, my intarweb bully friend, thanks for making me go. Man was that tasty. There’s no way that there’s anything like this in the States. The fake US wagyu can’t compare.

Turns out I’m not doing a very good job of blending in. For the first time in my life I had a cop ask me for my ID. I was walking down the street, minding my own business, when I saw two cops on the sidewalk. One of them started to ask me questions and as long as he seemed to be helpful, I thought I’d just ask him if I was at the right place on my map. He just asked if I had any ID on me. I handed him my passport and he said something like, “I guess you are from America,” and sent me on my way. Really, how many tourists with maps get asked for their ID on the street? Not only has FaceTime showed me that I’m not as pretty as I thought I was, I must also look fairly unsavory as well.

This was the second time someone thought I was speaking funny, and both times I had a cough drop in my mouth. I think it makes my tongue numb. I had another bad night of sleep with the coughing and woke up tired as hell. It may have been the exercising contributing to both the fatigue and the coughing so I may just lay off until I get home and just resign myself to being a butterball.

I didn’t get an early start, but I figured I’d check out another corner of Shinjuku city that had a lot of literary areas, or so it looked on the map. I started out going by that hill by my mom’s friends old apartment, and found the actual Hill.

I think it looks better when I’m not taking a picture into the sky.

It’s a little hard to see the inscription on the rock but the hill is 44.6m or about 146ft above sea level. That isn’t even as high as where I live in Portland.

There was a view through the trees of Shinjuku.

Then it was off to my meeting with the police. There are shrines and temples all long the road and I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep them straight. This is the one where I must have offended the gods because right after this they set the cops on me.

I don’t know much of my Japanese history, but here’s the grave of the Hayashi family. Hayashi is not an uncommon name, and there must be thousands of famous Hayashi’s in Japanese history. There was a placard, but I can’t read Japanese that well. Especially not the Japanese they put on placards.

I thought this might be the grave of Seki Takakazu (a famous mathemetician) or maybe a famous actress Matsui Sumako. The name on the sign is neither of theirs.

The first of the many temple pictures from today of Tamon-in Temple.

The actual temple at Tamon-in.

While there is a graveyard beyond the parking lot, there appear to be graves lining the right side of the parking lot as well.

I wandered around the neighborhood and found where Natsume Sōseki died. There’s a park where his house was. He was one of the foremost novelists of the Meiji era, used to be on the ¥1,000 bill, and I think his granddaughter taught at University of Oregon.

I had no idea I’d be seeing so many temples and they started to blend together, especially since I can’t read the signs for crap. I think this is Raiko-ji Temple.

And the temple of Raiko-ji.

The gate to the graveyard.

I didn’t take pictures of every temple I saw today, by the way.

Since the cop hassled me for being a foreigner today, I figured I should eat at Mickey D’s. Yeah, that’s right, since someone else treated me like crap, I should also treat myself like crap. America, F*ck Yeah!

The hamburger was a tsukimi (autumn moon viewing) special and had an egg on it.

As you can imagine, it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t great either. At least it was cheap. The signs along that part of the street were really unassuming and I had to walk by the Mickey D’s before I noticed it. After I left, I found a Mos Burger two doors down. I should have eaten there.

I backtracked to find the birthplace of Natsume Sōseki. I didn’t realize that what was marked on the map was going to just be an obelisk and a placard in front of a Japanese fast food store.

Across the intersection was the Ana-hachimangu shrine. There’s a police box to the left and I gave it a wide berth.

A closer look at the stairs.

Here’s the front of the gate and the annual used-book sale was going on in the courtyard to the left.

When the map said there were old book stores (it actually said, “Antiquarian Booksellers”) I didn’t realize there would be so many stores. I was impressed. It was much better than the sporting goods stores and the musical instrument stores I saw yesterday.

And the actual shrine.

I walked through the campus of Waseda University, which was the largest campus I’ve seen in Japan. I didn’t take any pictures because there were yoots everywhere and I needed to get away from them. There were statues of scholars on campus, but they were unhappy looking guys wearing robes and mortarboards.

Also on campus was the Tsubouchi Memorial theatre museum.

I thought about taking a picture of Okuma Garden, whatever significance that has, but it was full of yoots. The whole area was crawling with yoots.

As I escaped from Waseda University and it’s yoots, I found the terminus of the Toden Arakawa line trolley which still uses old replicas of the original trolleys.

Near the trolley terminus is Kansen-en park that has a spring they used to brew green tea.

It also had a cat that wanted to eat the koi that were much bigger than the cat.

Here’s where the koi live.

Across the Kandagawa river is the Tokyo Somemonogatari Museum. Or at least that’s what I think it is. I just wandered in and took some pictures because no one was around.

I think youc an take lessons in Japanese traditional dyeing techniques as well (if you could find someone).

On my wanderings I saw a two-level garage. I guess this is why they really make sure that cars don’t leak oil in Japan and I have no idea how they get the top cars out.

Next stop was Ryocho-in Temple which had two gates side-by-side. Here’s the one to the right.

And the temple to the right.

 

Here’s the left gate.

And the temple to the left.

I looked all over for the site of Takadanobaba but I couldn’t find a thing though the map clearly marked the spot I was searching. I did finally find one of the two placard that the map indicated was “Explanation board of Remains of Takadanobaba,” but they were a ways from the actual site.

I was finally done with my explorations and headed for the Takadanobaba train station, but I went by the Suwa-jinja.

Which is ned to Genkoku-ji Temple.

Which is next to Taue-jizo.

I got back safely without any more interaction with the police. There were a few Korean people checking into the hotel who were yelling at each other and who either couldn’t figure out an automatic door or just enjoyed bashing the baggage cart into both doors on the way to the lobby.

I gave up on trying to find an restaurant for dinner and bought food at the Tesco and you know what? It was cheap and it was pretty good.

It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, but it’s cleaning day and I have to be out of my room from 10AM to 2PM. I wonder where I should go.

The typhoon passed in the middle of the night and I woke up to a beautiful morning. I had another clear view of Mt. Fuji. But like the day before the typhoon, it was also ended up being kind of hot and humid.

I thought it would be a good day to hit the laundry room again, since I saw so many people leaving yesterday. Sure enough, it was completely empty when I first went down and I was able to hit the road around 10:30AM. I decided to start with Tokyo Station.

Today was the grand re-opening of the Tokyo Station. I expected it to be a bit crowded, and it was, but I’m not sure if it’s any more or less crowded than I remember Tokyo Station being in the past.

With the grand re-opening there were news crews from most of the Tokyo stations.

Lots of people were taking pictures of the newly rebuilt parts of the of the old station, inside and out.

And, of course, there were lots of signs that are easily read (hah). As a rail terminus, there are lots of trains.

I have to say it is pretty.

The outside is also well done.

   

I didn’t explore the whole station because, well, it is a rail station and it’s probably just full of rail offices.

 

I think these guys are mascots of the station and not just crazy people.

And yet another news team.

Some panorama pictures that looked better when I was taking them.

I have to figure out how to get a good panorama out of the iPhone.

After that I went walking through the business district. I felt like I didn’t belong, mainly because I didn’t belong. Everyone was way richer than I am and the stores weren’t anywhere I’d shop.

Looks like Mitsubishi was having some sort of press event.

And another news crew.

And the old mansion of the guy who started the Mitsubishi conglomerate. It’s a museum and there’s a nice courtyard inside.

On the other side of the financial district from Tokyo station is the Imperial residence. That meant lots of walking in the direct sun, but it was pretty once you got off the streets.

 

I sat down on a bench in the park and had my lunch, more Calorie Mate.

The actual view wasn’t just an empty parking lot and trees, but a bunch of unmarked police cars as well. I was in the shade with a nice breeze, but it was so bright I was getting a headache.

After you pass the guard houses of the Imperial residence, you reach another business district in Chiyoda-ku.

But it also had a Starbucks and I had yet to get my obligatory Matcha Latte. This was the other half of my lunch and I hope it counts as hydration.

I also took a picture of a dessert shop for my sister (under construction, or destruction).

After that I went to the various shopping areas of Chiyoda City. There is the Second-hand books area and, according to the city map signs, a sporting goods area (which just looked like several of the same golf store), a musical instruments area (lots of guitar stores full of guitars), and Nicholai-do built by St. Nicholai of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Nicholai-do is very close to the Ochanomizu station.

The city maps that sent me to the boring sporting good area also mentioned some “old established stores” and I think it may be some of these.

Or maybe this old-looking soba shop.

        

Across from the soba shop was a large post office, and my sister wanted me to buy her some postcard stamps. There are post offices everywhere because they also have bank accounts and sell insurance.

After that I went to Akihabara again and bought another iPhone charger. I don’t think it works the way I thought it did. Ah well. I’ll experiment with it after I get home.

Afterwards I walked to the Kanda Myojin Shrine and saw some of the famous Tokyo stairs.

Kanda Myojin Shrine was quite colorful and was supposed to be established in 730.

The back of the gate. I take pictures of the backs of the gates because they always seem to be lit better by the sunlight.

Here’s a picture of the shrine on the right.

For some reason there was a tiny horse there, too.

I headed back and hit the workout room for the first time since I got here. I’m still coughing and so it wasn’t the most fun. My sister keeps reminding me to properly hydrate and I may not be doing a good job because I was cramping up in my warmup. I kept it short.

Then it was time for dinner. My sister sent me the names of two places I asked about, Daiwa Sushi at Tsukiji and  Steak House Satou in Kichijoji. The reviews for Daiwa sushi suggest that you start lining up at 7:30AM and I’m not that kind of guy. Steak house Satou is only a few stops away from my hotel on the Chuo line but the steak dinner starts at  ¥10,000. For ¥10,000 I think I can wait for a steak at Ringside.

I thought it might be back down to Tesco for a prepared dinner but somehow I finally found my way to Freshness Burger. Fatz’s is closed on Mondays or I would have gone there. I had a blue cheese burger, onion rings, karaage chicken, and limeade. The limeade was freshly made and was the best part of dinner. The burger was OK, but not great. I was craving karaage chicken and that wasn’t that great either.

I ended up buying potato chips (since I was also craving more salt) and a beer on the way home, so in total dinner was ¥2,000. At least it wasn’t ¥10,000. In comparison, my dinner last night was ¥300.

I just watched a show where a bunch of actors tried to figure out what the top 10 items at two restaurants were. One team (who lost) were at a sushi restaurant. The other team was at a family restaurant called Bikkuri Donkey that had hamburger steaks. They had to order the item and eat it before they were able to ask if it was in the top 10. The sushi guys were hosed from the beginning because there were way more items on their menu, including sushi combinations.

Man, after watching that show I’m craving Bikkuri Donkey.