Kanda (Part Two)

Happy July everyone! We've officially reached the halfway point. Home in 6 months! Above is a priest, blessing the parade participants.

This is a very scary guy. I barely used the zoom, he was so close. Some tourists got right up in his face, snapping pictures. But he freaked me out a little.

Here he is, approaching the shrine with his minions. It's kind of hard to see, but check out the shoes. They were platforms, maybe 8 inches high but about an inch wide. I don't know how he walks on those.

Another priest. He was setting up for the big blessing of the mikoshi. I think this picture is so cool. I have no idea how I managed to make it focused on him but all swirly in the background. It had something to do with the flash and the night setting. Yeah, I'm professional.

These are the items that are used for blessing the 3 big mikoshi. Other than the fruit, I don't know what they are. I didn't even use the zoom on this, that's how close we were. Pure dumb luck. I was right up against the table with the offerings.

A close up of one of the mikoshi. This was the first festival we went to with these, so we got a lot of close ups. It's pretty, isn't it?

Another mikoshi being carried up to get blessed. At the end of the night it got a little rowdier. Earlier there was more of a family vibe, but I'm pretty sure most of these guys were drunk.

Here are the 3 main mikoshi lined up for the blessing. It was a pretty long ceremony.

On a totally un-Japan note, how sad is it about Michael Jackson? He was pretty troubled, but man, he made some great music. It definitely has been getting press over here, although nothing like in the US. They call him Michael-san, which I like.

Kanda Festival (Part One)

This was a festival in Kanda (about 15 minutes from our house) we went to back in May. I'm really behind in posting, sorry. We took lots of good pictures here, so I'm splitting it into two posts. Much like the other festivals, this one had a parade through the streets, ending at a shine. But this one had floats in addition to the mikoshi (portable shrines).

How utterly terrifying is that? Imagine it coming straight at you. I snapped the picture and then quickly retreated before she could eat me.

After the parade through the streets, each float, shine, and group comes to the shrine to be blessed by the priests. This is up near the front of the shrine. We ended up in a really good spot via sheer dumb luck.

A couple of floats in the parade. The big brownish-black thing is a whale and that's a Chinese dragon in the front. It was really crowded (surprise, surprise).

This is actually not a great picture because you can't see how tall this thing is. It's huge. I'm not great at spatial measurement, but it was a good 2 stories. Maybe 3. It's another type of shrine that can be pulled on the streets in a parade. This one was parked, though. They might only bring it out on special occasions. It looks really heavy. We saw a replica like this at the Edo-Tokyo Museum and it showed this being pulled by about 50-60 men. So yeah, heavy.

This is the entrance to the shrine. Lots of people.

The main building of the shrine. Cool picture, huh? I can't remember who took that one. It might have been Gen, because I started to get irritated by being shoved around so I gave up the camera temporarily and went off to pout. If you ever need to get anywhere in Japan in a hurry, get behind a feisty oba-san (grandma). She'll clear the path!

Gen's Race

In May, Gen and some of his work colleagues participated in the Ekiden Carnival, a 23-kilometer race. It was a relay, with one team member running 10K, one 5K, one 3K, and another 5K. Gen was the 10K leg. Kao had two teams. I was the official team photographer.

Receiving a pep talk and some strategy.

This is a little out of order. This is after the race, but it's a cute picture. In Japan, you drink beer immediately after you run. Gen was a sissy because he had water first.

A lot of people dressed up in costumes. Do you see the beer hat just to the left of middle? This was the starting line.

This girl's team were all dressed as French maids. There were actually a lot of French maid teams. Some of the costumes were very elaborate.

There were a lot of people there. A lot. The last race Gen participated in I think there were 100 or 120 runners. There were thousands here. Look at the guy to the left in the wrestling mask. Those guys were 100% committed to those costumes. It was over 90 degrees. I also saw one guy dressed as a supervillian (I suppose from some manga or something) and his costume was head to toe leather. On the hottest day of the year.

After the race we had a BBQ. The losers had to buy (that was Gen's team). We went to a "campground" so we could grill outdoors (that pesky fire rule again). It was pretty far away, close to the airport. The campground provides the grills, grilling utensils, charcoal, and some meat and you just have to bring any extra food you want and the booze.

Kanpai! (Cheers!)

Mmmm, meat. When it's finished cooking you just reach in with your chopsticks and grab a piece. This is pork. We also had some beef and fish. And veggies, then we made yakisoba (stir-fried noodles) with some of the pork and veggies.

Enjoying some well-deserved rest. That was a fun day.

Odaiba

Three weeks ago it was pretty gloomy, so we decided to go to Odaiba. Odaiba is a little seaside area in Tokyo. It took about an hour from our apartment. You get to it by bus (boring), train, or water taxi. We took the train, which was cool because it goes over the Rainbow Bridge. The building above is the Fuji TV building. The globe thing in the middle has an observation deck, but we didn't go up.

This is Decks, one of the big shopping malls in Odaiba. It kind of reminded me of something you would find in Myrtle Beach. But huge, of course. We found a really cool housewares store. We got my dad a Father's Day present and some wine glasses and a yakiniku (mini BBQ) set for ourselves. Gen won't let me use either, though. He's afraid we'll get evicted for the yakiniku set (you're not allowed to have open flame outdoors in Tokyo) and he said I'll probably break the wineglasses. So they're just sitting in their bag in the corner of the living room.

Gen with an old-fashioned Japanese arcade game. They had an area inside the mall that depicted Japan in the 1950's. It was cute, in an amusement park kind of way. They also had an area that was supposed to be a little Hong Kong, but that was disappointing. It was just a bunch of Chinese restaurants. We were hoping for some fun food stalls, but they were all sit-down.

Gen really likes this picture. The polar bears are crying because of global warming. There were a lot of people having weddings here. We spied on a few and decided we would like to attend a Japanese wedding. But we need to figure out how to get invited.

Here's the view from outside the mall. Behind my head is the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo. It was pretty gloomy during the day, but wait until the next picture...

Pretty! How funny is the Statue of Liberty there? I think it's a 1/6-size replica. But look at the lights! Odaiba also has the biggest Ferris wheel in the world. We were going to ride it at night, but it took us too long to figure out where to eat dinner. There are a lot of good restaurants in Odaiba. We ended up at an izakaya (Japanese pub). We had some great sashimi. Probably the most unusual thing we ate there was grilled tuna jawbone. It was yummy. We wanted to sit outside, but the waiter said it was going to rain. It didn't. We think he just didn't want to go outside for one table.

This is my number one favorite picture. We think the boats are party boats. You can rent them for a certain number of hours and the price includes food and drinks. The boats don't go anywhere, though. They just float around the bay. Tokyo Tower is right in the middle of the picture. It was so pretty. Odaiba was lots of fun!

Yokohama Chinatown

Yokohama's most famous tourist spot is Chinatown. We came here after going to the Landmark Tower. It was a lot of fun. We just wandered the streets for hours. Above is one of the entrance gates at night.

That's me at a temple. Well, the temple is in front of me so you can't see it.

A close-up on one of the temple decorations. It's a little hard to see, but they were all so intricate. The carving in the center is a boat filled with people and animals.

This is one of Gen's favorite pictures. The cloudiness is the smoke from burning incense. I love walking around temples and shrines because they always smell so good.

This is one of my favorite pictures! Gen with Hello Kitty dressed as a panda. It took me a while to convince him to pose here. There were a lot of panda souvenirs in Chinatown. The zoo in Ueno had a panda but it died last year. They're trying to get another one from the Chinese government, but you know how that goes. All of the gift shops around the zoo still optimistically sell panda merchandise.

As usual, we ate our way around town. This was a little roadside stand selling shumai, Chinese dumplings. They were yummy. Our 7-11 sells shumai flavored Cheetos. I sent some to my dad and he loved them! They also have potato chips flavored with chili shrimp, beef stew, and curry. Sounds weird, but they're all delicious! The Chinese students in my Japanese class say that Chinatown's food isn't authentic. Maybe, but it was tasty. We also tried manju, which are steamed buns filled with pork, and a shrimp filled eggroll.

Chinatown at night. There were a lot of people there. This was after dinner. We totally weren't hungry, but decided we couldn't leave until we tried Peking duck. Gen's parents actually have some friends who own a restaurant on the Main road here, but we didn't know that at the time so we just went to one that didn't have a long waiting time. Oh, and the Peking duck was great! We also got custard tarts to take home for dessert. I fell in love with these when we went for dim sum in San Francisco last year. I can't wait to go to China and try the real deal.

Yokohama

About a month ago we went to Yokohama. It's a port city about an hour from our apartment. This is the view from the Landmark Tower, the tallest building in Japan.

The wedge-shaped building is a hotel. This year is the 150th anniversary of the opening of Yokohama port.

They had a little mini-aquarium set up in the tower. It was called Mermaid City.

I have a bit of the wonky eye in this picture. They had a photo booth where you can choose a digital background to pose with, so we were total cheesy tourists and got a picture. The background we picked is basically this one, but also with Mt. Fuji in the background.

Looking out toward Tokyo. In theory, you can see Mt. Fuji on a clear day. It was sunny this day, but I guess too smoggy. Gen kept saying he saw Fuji, but I think he was just trying to make me jealous.