Days Three and Four: Akasaka, Roppongi, Typhoon Faxai, Shibuya, and Shinjuku

The past two days have been mostly wandering around Tokyo.

In Akasaka (where my hotel is located), I started down at Tokyo Midtown, a large mall, and went to the Suntory Museum of Art. Their current exhibit is showcasing Mino tea wares, which were mostly made in the 16th-17th centuries with a revival in the mid 20th century.

That was pretty interesting - one of the most common elements of the pottery was extreme imperfection. The bowls had warped openings, the glazes were applied in uneven layers, and some even had slashes and gouges in them, as if someone had take a knife and sliced into them. I find it extremely fascinating that an entire art form was based on creating items that looked like the first things I attempted to make on the pottery wheel in high school. While I personally preferred the designs that were more symmetrical in shape (I blame the part of me that got me working in accounting), the whole exhibit was worth checking out.

Tokyo Midtown itself was a bunch of what appeared to be high-end stores, so I didn't bother looking in any of them, but it was a nice mall.

Outside was pretty, too.

Roppongi I wasn't very impressed by. It smelled like pee (the only place I've been so far that smelled), and there was garbage everywhere (the only place I've been so far with litter on the ground), and it just wasn't very nice. So I went and walked the loop around the Imperial Palace (you can't see anything for 90% of it, but it was a nice tree-lined avenue.

And then I went back to the hotel because my feet were still sore from Nikko and I think the Nikko hills disagreed with my left knee because it's been acting up.

I also wanted to make sure I was back before the inclement weather started.

The typhoon did end up landing in Chiba, which is a little bit to the east of Tokyo - Narita Airport is in Chiba prefecture. So it was super super raining and still pretty windy (a little above 80km/h) when I woke up around 5 am. It was honestly pretty anticlimactic here - it was basically a windstorm like we get at home. It was definitely worse elsewhere, though, so I'm pretty lucky that it was that boring. And everywhere I went today, you could see the aftereffects of it.

But hey, now I can say I lived through a typhoon!

The famous Shibuya scramble crossing wasn't as busy as all those timelapses you see on the internet makes them look, but I think that's because of the storm. The trains didn't start running until after 8 am, and a lot of them were delayed and running less often until probably mid-afternoon from the debris that had to be cleared from the tracks. There were city workers everywhere cleaning the streets of debris all over - a little truck in the park drove past with its back full of fallen branches, a guy with a hose was spraying the alley debris into a pile, a man with a broom was sweeping some stairs... they really do work hard to keep the city clean.

Here are some Shibuya photos, including a park and some shots of the Meiji Jingu Shrine:

The crows were all grabbing the nuts that had fallen from the trees.

Bonus finger.

In Shinjuku, the first thing I saw walking out of the station was this:

Is this a case of Engrish, or was it a deliberate decision? I'm afraid I might never know.

I walked to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building because the viewing deck access is free, which is my favourite amount to pay for things.

Fuji is in this shot.

Fuji! Can you see its apex peeking above those clouds?

 

The Meiji Jingu Shrine is in that big green space.

And then I went back to the hotel to ice my knee.

Tomorrow I'm off to Hakone!