I finally found the Tokyo I expected today.
Shinjuu Gyoen National Garden was the first place I visited this morning. Tokyo is the first time I’ve had to pay to enter any public park or gardens with this being the second I’ve had too. Split into three parts the traditional Japanese gardens, the French formal gardens and the English gardens; three very different styles junctapositioned next too each other. The rigid layout of the French Gardens, the open space of the English Parkland complete with London plane and the self-contained Japanese garden. At the same time as our visit there appeared to be a mother and child day. Something I’ve never seen before where thousands of motheres were bringing their young children to the park for an organised event. Their singing and chanting reminded me that I was in a foreign country.
The black ravens in the park were a novel sight for me too. They did not feel afraid to hop along through the flower beds whilst I walked by.
For lunch we met Kayoko, her husband, her sister and parents for a traditional Japanese meal, rice, deep fried prawns, soup, steamed egg and Ashai Beer in what appeared to be quite an upmarket restaurant. It was quite an experience to share beer filling the glass of Kayoko’s father sitting opposite me who didn’t have purple hair this time. Following on from the beer Kayoko’s father bought some Saki and ended up trying some.
After lunch we had a walk in gardens where we spotted a Japanese wedding party taking photos in the gardens. Located in the gardens was a tea house that Kayoko and her fiancee had booked a tea ceremony for us at. We were served some cakes along with some green tea. This was the first time I tried green tea in Japan. I was surprised at how bitter it was.
In the evening Patrick and myself took a walk out into Electric City. Finally wandering down this neon illuminated street I’d found the Japan that I had been expecting. Bright lights big city.
Something that I hadn’t expected were the arcades full of gambling machines. It took us a while to find a proper arcade.
Wandering round this arcade I was suprised at the variety of games there. There were the dancing games, shooting games and then there was the Gundam game where people sitting in pods taking part in a multiplayer game. Through the wall I could see projected pictures enveloping in a total experience. There were horse racing games with a model track with model horses racing round it in time to the pictures on the screen watched by the competitors. Another game had players playing a warlord with armies and cards that they played to do something. Similar games involving cards were a football which somehow had a league across Tokyo and a dungeon bashing games. The people doing the dancing games were really taking things seriously. One major surprise in the arcade was the on the flight of stairs going to the top floor was a sign saying No single males. Guess this means that these were games for couples only on the top floor a Japanese thing were it’s cool to go on a date with a girl to an arcade.
Patrick and I wandered in to the one we found and had a go at a shooting game. The on screen instructions were in Japanese but fortunately the dialogue was in English. Unfortunately we ddidn’t do that well. Next off we tried a drumming game. Much more fun to my way of thinking, in fact one of the games that I wanted to try whilst I was out in Japan. It took us a few games to work out what red symbols versus blue symbols meant. Red hit the drum in the middle, blue hit it at end. Lots of drumming later and ended up with blisters.
An interesting day in all and I found the Japan I was looking for.
