The first leg of the journey was a three-day stay in Tokyo with Rika's aunt, and while there we had a chance to get out and see how the busier parts of the metropolis had fared since we had last seen it.
Tokyo has some really cool architectural design. This building's facade was made of stainless steel about a quarter-inch thick, with holes drilled in it to create the pattern you see.
This Nissan showroom, also bedecked in a generous helping of stainless steel and space-age design, was more of an advertising venue than a working showroom. There was only space for two cars inside, and nary a salesperson to be seen.
We cruised on over to Ueno that afternoon because Rika had never seen the National Science Museum there. I visited with my friend Toshi in 2005 (and reported the exploits on this very blog) but it was worth seeing again. There were new exhibits, as well as things I just totally missed the first time.
One of the new exhibits was this spherical theater. (Check out the guy in the upper right for a sense of scale.) This is one step up from the IMAX dome theaters you may have seen at other science museums. This one actually has screens covering the full interior surface of the sphere. But where does the viewer sit, you ask? On a floating bridge with a glass floor.
To get a visual of this, imagine a ping pong ball that has been pierced horizontally through the center with a toothpick. A person standing on the toothpick in the middle of the ping pong ball has a nearly completely unobstructed view of the entire interior surface, especially if the toothpick is made of glass. In this theater, the only obstructutions are really the doors on each side, some of the non-transparent superstructure of the bridge, and of course, the other patrons.
The effect is awesome. You feel as though you are in a glass ball floating through the world. You can look in any direction--even up, where you might see birds flying overhead, or down, where you might see a grassy plain breezing by beneath your feet. It's amazing.
Of course, there are a few problems: 1) The requirement for the audience to stand limits the effective length of a movie, 2) The special filming technology required makes creating the films difficult and expensive, and 3) I felt like I didn't know where I should look--like something important might be happening behind me and I wouldn't know it.
Still, for educational purposes, this is really a great platform. The movie we saw, about dinosaurs, contained the most breathtaking and illuminating illustration of the evolutionary tree of life I have ever seen. Whereas textbooks show it as a two-dimensional schematic and then take pains to explain that it's actually more like a thick bush, this depiction placed the viewer inside the center of a thicket of furiously growing vines, new branches and sprouts shooting off in every direction, some coming to dead ends here and there while others continued their fractal ascent, as names of orders, families, and genera appeared nearby the appropriate lines.
We spent about three hours in this museum, but it was nowhere near enough time. The fossil collection alone is jaw-dropping. This is a collection of ancient flora.
A collection of fish fossils.
Rika loved this baby dinosaur so much she wanted to take him home.
One of the great things about this museum is that they give you a lot of background on how certain deductions are made. For example, how are artist's renderings of hominids made? Can we really have any good idea of how they looked? This exhibit shows the CSI-esque technique of adding muscle, ligament, and cartillage to a cast of a skull, then applying skin overtop to arrive at a best-guess at appearance. Even the color of the skin is probably roughly accurate, since we know hominids got their start in Africa, and we know that skin color is an adaptation related to sun exposure (fair-skinned people didn't appear until people arrived in Northern latitudes). For that matter, we can even make an educated guess about eye color (blue and green eyes also first appeared in Northern latitudes, possibly as a side effect of the skin color changes).
So we really enjoyed the museum. If science and natural history is your thing, I guarantee you will be blown away by the place. Check it out if you're in the area.
For dinner that evening we met up with some of Rika's friends at a very swank restaurant. (Apologies to Konno-san, who was the one taking this photo. We don't have any of you at this restaurant!)
The next day we visited Rika's friend Chie, who is trying to get a foot massage business off the ground. She offered to ply her trade on us free of charge. Now, I should say in advance that Rika and I have a pretty different idea of what constitutes a good massage. But this foot massage definitely elicited different reactions in the two of us....
Utter relaxation is the order of the day for Rika as pressure points are activated and healthy energy flows along its proper channels.
Racked with agony, Brian struggles with the temptation to give up the secret recipe for Coca Cola and make it all stop.
I don't know. All I can say is, the bottom of your feet are surprisingly sensitive. And, Japanese people seem to have a bit of a latent S&M thing going on.
After the foot
We sat on this bench and listened to some street music while we sipped beers. (Yeah, you can do that in Japan!)
Nadia and Masa.
Nearby I couldn't help but notice that someone had totally ripped off the Cream of Wheat guy for their store sign. But why does this guy even belong on the sign for a clothing store? Somebody has got a weird sense of humor.
Some more awesome Tokyo architecture. This is a school of design. The building is actually curved.
We stopped into an arcade in Shinjuku to check out what the kids these days are playing (say that phrase out loud right now and you'll instantly feel twenty years older) and saw something pretty cool. This place had a ton of games that use physical playing cards that the player lays out on a table to control the game. So this guy would throw cards down onto the table, then move them into a row, then fan them out, and so on. Kind of like those old card-based role playing games on steroids. Interesting stuff.
Remember how when you were a kid the expensive games were two quarters, and the really over-the-top ones were a dollar? This Gundum game, which puts you in a cockpit with a 180-degree curved screen, was $5 a pop. It looked pretty fun, but I played Gundum once on Xbox and I totally sucked, and since I didn't want to blow 500 yen to walk around and crash into buildings, I contented myself to just watch as Masa also pretended to play the game.
We met up with a bunch of friends for dinner and drinks at a very cool izakaya that evening. An izakaya is kind of like a bar, except they serve food too, and they look very cool inside, with lots of attention to mood and lighting. This one had the feel of Tokyo 150 years ago, with the corridors between private seating rooms recalling wooden-planked streets. (Alas, the low lighting also means good pictures are hard to come by.)
The reason everyone is busting up in this photo is because when I set the timer on the camera and went to run over to take my place, I failed to notice a large concrete column about thigh-high (the kind that prevents vehicles from entering a pedestrian area) and bashed right into it. I was able to limp to my position in time for the photo, but man, my leg hurt for days afterward.
That was our last day in Tokyo. The next day we traveled out to the countryside to see Rika's family. August 13th is the first official day of Obon, which is a holiday to honor one's recent ancestors. It's akin to Thanksgiving in that there is mass movement of people as relatives return to hometowns. We specifically aimed to be in Japan for Obon so that we could see Rika's brother Kiyoharu, whom we hadn't seen in three years.
We arrived in town a few days before everyone else, so we had some time to ourselves. We found a fantastic cycling trail made by paving over an old rail line that went out of business. The great thing about that approach is that there are no cars, and it has all its own bridges, so it's quiet and safe.
We rode past small farms along the base of Mount Tsukuba.
The red line on this map shows the trail. It connects two still-in-use railway lines.
Is Rika directing air traffic over there?
Long stretches of the trail had cherry trees planted on each side. Each tree had the name of a family who had donated to the project, and the maintenance is done by community volunteer organizations.
More views from the trail.
One of the coolest, and most unexpected, things about the trail was that the old stations were still there. Some had been reduced to mere contrete platforms in the process of being reclaimed by grass and weeds, but some, like this one, had been made into rest areas.
"I've been waiting here all day! When was that train supposed to arrive?"
We ended up riding all the way to the end of the line in one direction, which was a pretty good distance. We figure we rode about 50km altogether that day.
We also did a lot of walking in town. This is an alley street near Rika's house.
Another plot of rice about a 15-minute walk from Rika's house.
When the family was fully assembled, one of the first things we did was go to the aptly-named 10,000-Person Pool. It's a water park with slides, a wave pools, an eternal river pool, and a diving area.
Rika's brother Yuji and his wife Yuko take a lap around the eternal river.
Horsing around with the kids.
From the left, nephews Takuya, Kazuki, and Ryoga, and niece Mayu.
One aspect of Obon is to ceremonially take your ancestors home with you for the duration of the celebration. So everyone visits their family grave site (this structure will eventually hold the ashes of an entire dynasty), where they lay flowers and incense. Then a lit candle, symbolizing the ancestors, is transfered to a paper lantern for transport home.
Big brother Kiyoharu carries out lantern duty.
One evening we made our way to a recreational area that had the most expansive selection of athletic equipment for kids I have ever seen. This contraption was only one of dozens!
Kiyoharu and Rika give in to their inner child.
That rollercoaster track you see is actually a roller-slider. It's like a slide except instead of a metal bottom, there are a series of freely spinning pins, kind of like a conveyor belt, without the belt. You can sit or squat at the top (word to the wise: sitting results in a very ticklish sensation in the buttal region) and ride down at a pretty good clip.
Ryoga demonstrates the proper posture. That's me cruising along behind him.
Yuji and Yuko took us out to a nice restaurant that serves a series of courses from various countries. On this particular evening, we were treated to something like seven courses from France, China, and Japan. It was delicious.
Since the family couldn't attend her graduation in April, Rika brought her cap and gown with her to take a group photo. Congratulations, Rika!
Before we knew it, it was time to head home. But we had a great time hanging out with everyone, and we can't wait to see you again soon!
