Japan Trip Day 6: Bukimina Robotto (Pictures)
Welcome to Day 6. This is the last day I will spend in Tokyo before I travel west. There was so much I wanted to do, but there was nowhere near enough time. So I kinda shut down. So all I visited today was Tokyo Tower and a shrine near the tower. The shrine is... interesting. Shall we proceed?
Two views of Tokyo Tower. I feel like with a name like "Tokyo Tower" it should be bigger than the SkyTree. But it is not. It might be more iconic, though. It looks like a orange and white Eiffel Tower.
There is a shrine... inside Tokyo Tower. The box in the front is for donations. The typical donation at a Japanese shrine is a mere 5 yen, that is less than 5 cents. But there is a reason for that. Go-en means destiny in Japanese. While Go en also means 5 yen. It is considered lucky to offer up 5 yen to the gods, in the hopes that it would bring one closer to their destiny. But holy hell were 5 yen coins hard to come by. Based on my experience 100 and 10 yen coins are much more common (looking at my stack of yen that I just dumped out of Kaeru) 10 yen donations are bad luck, though... never make a 10 yen donation. At this point in my journey, I had yet to receive a single 5 yen coin.
A series of views from Tokyo Tower. Can see all over the city from in here, and today was much clearer than pretty much all the days I spent in Tokyo. Seriously, Tokyo was rain, rain, rain, sun... Just kidding more rain. On a clear day, one might actually be able to see Mt. Fuji from up here... I will have to wait several days to see Mt. Fuji.
It's Pepper! The creepy robot that haunts the exit to Tokyo Tower. Unless you time it just right, you will be standing here, looking into her cold dead eyes for several minutes. She will sing, and dance, and tell you she loves you, and I'm gonna hide under my desk now so Pepper can't find me! Pepper wants you to know you are out of peanut butter, and your milk is going to expire soon.
Look at all that orange. The structure of Tokyo Tower seen through a glass floor. I did not walk on the glass floor, because I'm not crazy... well, perhaps I wouldn't go that far. I'm not THAT crazy... That seems better. I do not trust glass to hold up my fat ass.
There is something fishy about these wind socks. I had read somewhere that these are hung in preparation for Children’s day which is in may, so roughly 1 month after this picture was taken. I also read that there are 333 of them, to correspond to the tower’s height of 333 meters.
The shrine I went to after Tokyo Tower was rather close to Tokyo Tower, see it lurking there in the background? Pepper is still watching. Always watching and waiting.
Sakura and the dolls. These dolls are representative of unborn children. Parents have decorated the statues with toys and various bits of clothing. Parents leave offerings to the gods here to ask the god of children to watch over their departed children, and see them safely to the afterlife. The sakura were the focus of this picture, I was actually trying to avoid getting the dolls in the picture, but... this was such a nice angle.
I decided to go elsewhere in the shrine...or was this a temple? I think it was actually a temple. Google tells me Zojo-ji is a Buddhist temple. This is apparently the main temple of Jodo-shu Buddhism. Honestly it felt like a nice little oasis inside the hustle and bustle.
Images of some lady? She seemed to have some significance. If you zoom in on her crown in the second picture, you might be able to make out the little Buddha carved there. Naturally there was a plaque of some variety nearby that explained what I am looking at, but I didn’t take a picture.
Another twofer. The sign in the first image explains the tree in the second image. For a change, my stupid ass actually took a picture to tell me what I was looking at! Dating back to 1979, that would mean it dates all the way back to the beginning of the Meiji era. That also means, it was planted only slightly after Edo changed its name to Tokyo. So essentially this tree is almost as old as Tokyo itself
More Sakura... more creepy dolls. Well, they aren't dolls. But I like creepy doll as opposed to creepy statue.
A large bell on the grounds of Zojo-ji. Look at that log used to ring it! It didn’t ring while I was there, but I imagine it sounds like a large gong.
I was trying to find those famous weird Japanese vending machines. If I had had appropriate change, I would have bought one of those bugs. Sadly, I had spent most of my coinage at this point. Anyway, this is perhaps the weirdest vending machine I found. Batteries. bugs, and juice. Good times.
The hole in the wall ramen shop I found near the vending machine above. It was interesting to note there were no beer choices. There was only "beer". Also, you ordered food and beverage from a pseudo-vending machine. It acted like a vending machine, but it spat out tickets that you then had to present to the people inside. The people inside handled no money. Interesting side note. Suntory (the company mentioned on the glass owns Jim Beam. And the company is an integral part to the Bill Murray film “Lost in Translation”. One last fun fact before I move on to the next picture. I saw “Lost in Translation” for the first time on my flight back from Tokyo.
Ramen. One of the most iconic of Japanese cuisines, popular among college students in cheap packet form. This is anything but the cheap ass college student fare. This is a fried pork cutlet, on noodles, in broth with some assorted veggies. Damn this was good. I wish I had gone to more ramen shops. Just looking at this makes me want to run to the nearest ramen shop… well, drive. It’s like 6 miles away and I can not run that far.
I talked about it once or twice, but I was in a hotel right by Square Enix headquarters. This picture is of the building itself. I really wanted to march in there and demand they start work on Chrono Trigger 2... I wanna play Chrono Trigger now... I could pull it up on Steam right now and play it instead of doing this site upgrade.
What... you think Japan just has light switches? Nope! They had these things that you had to put a card into to turn on the power for the room. They had the like in Kyoto and Kuratsu as well. Although both of those used your room key as the card. So, you had to turn the lights out when you left the room... or you were locked out. It did not take long for me to figure it out.
The fabled strawberry sandwich! I had seen these in anime time and again, but assumed they were some anime invention. Then at 7/11 I found it! It was sufficiently tasty. Putting strawberries on bread seemed a little odd, but... it worked. I should have picked up another one before I left Japan.
