Note: I have many pictures to add to this post but not enough time to process them all right now. Please check back later.
The plan for today was to see the Tokyo Edo Museum, The Kukugikan Sumo Area and the Kyu-Yasuda Teien Park.
I woke up early again today and did some writing as I am getting a little backlogged. I was going to do some laundry at the same time but the vending machine was out of detergent so I had to wait for the office to open by which time it was too late as I didn’t want to wait around for my cloths dry. It’s back to being sunny again which is great as far I’m concerned.
I had not heard anything back from the Yamasa Institute in Okazaki where I will be going to school so I had not yet bought my ticket to get there. Late yesterday though I received an e-mail from Yamasa asking for an update on my arrival plans so I decided to finalize my ticket this morning. That meant that I needed to go to a Japan Rail (JR) station to book a ticket. I used hyperdia to look at my options and choose a route to Okazaki that was the least expensive and most direct but not the fastest. Basically Tokyo to Toyohashi via the Kodama Shinkansen (the slowest of the bullet trains) and from there to Okazaki via a JR new rapid train all in less than 3 hours for ¥9,220. Looking at the rest of my plans for the day most of which were in Sumida-ku I decided to take the Hibiya train to Akihabara which is a fairly major JR station, stop there and buy my ticket to Okazaki and continue on via JR to Sumida-ku where most of my activities would be.
I got to the Akiba station with no problems but got distracted as I walked by the Yodobashi Camera store and ducked in for a quick look which ended up lasting about 90 minutes. If its neat and electronic this place has it on one of its 8 floors. The iPhone 5 was everywhere. Like most stores here Yodobashi has a theme song which is regularly played over their PA system. Their theme uses the same melody as the Battle Hymn of the Republic which is also the melody that is used for my Union’s song so by the time I left I had the words for “The Union Makes Us Strong” running through my head which is not the way a vacation should be. To drive out the evil tune I stopped for a while in front of another shop that was playing the Sword Art Online OP theme.
Back at the JR station I tried using the ticket reservation machine to book my Okazaki trip. I did manage to book and pay for the Tokyo to Toyohashi trip but could not figure out how to book from there to Okazaki. I gave up and found the JR ticket office and went in to get help. I had typed a copy of my itinerary into my phone in Japanese which helped and the agent was able to book the last leg for me.
I then took the JR Chuo-Sobu line to the Ryogoku station where I got off for my first stop, the Tokyo Edo Museum.
While on the train I received another email from Yamada saying that I had an offer from a host family who would like to have me stay with them. A homestay had been my first choice for accomodations but I had pretty much given up hope of getting one this late in the game and had resigned myself to living in residence. The homestay process works kind of like PetFinder and the SPCA. You send in a few pictures and a short blurb about yourself which are posted for potential families to look at. If someone wants the doggy-in-the-window you get a new home otherwise it’s the kennel (residence) for you. I accepted the offer and am looking forward to my new home. I hope to learn a lot about Japanese family life and culture.
The Tokyo Edo Museum is housed in a building that is difficult to describe. Their website describes it as being “modelled after an elevated-floor type warehouse” whatever that means. You walk up a long series of steps to an open air plaza which is considered the 3rd floor. There you buy your ticket and take a series of escalators up the the 6th floor where the exhibits start. To access the exhibits on the 6th you cross a reproduction of the original wooden Nihonbashi bridge. From its height you can also look down on the exhibits on the 5th floor icluding full scale reproductions of the Nakamura Theater and the Choya Newspaper building. The 6th floor and part of the 5th floor depict the life and culture in Edo (Old Tokyo) around 1600. There are many very detailed miniature and several full scale models of buildings complete with people that show what life was like then. The rest of the 5th floor depict how Tokyo changed in other eras. The special exhibits floor was not open at the time that I visited.
After I finished touring the museum I had lunch in the restaurant on the 7th floor of the museum building. I had a beautiful panorama of Tokyo to look at while I enjoyed my unagi gozen lunch. Looking at the cityscape which is very flat I realized that I missed having mountains to look at and that a river however large is no substitute for the ocean.
After lunch I walked by the Kokugikan Sumo Stadium next door to the museum but not much was going on there. I then walked a short distance to Kyu-Yasuda Teien (Old Yusuda Garden) Park which I had been able to see from the restaurant. The park has a central lake with a small island and a walking path around the outside. The original garden was part of a lords estate in the Edo period and at that time the lake was tidal, fed from the Sumida river. Much of the original park was destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake and the current park is a restoration work of Sumida Ward. The lake while still feed from the river is no longer tidal. Here I found the birds that I had been missing in other parts of the city. Some familiar songs and some new. It was a refreshing interlude.
I stopped at the Tokyo Animation Centre on the way back but did not find the exhibit that interesting. I guess I was already museumed-out for the day. This time I did manage to find the right station entrance for the Tsukuba Express Line. There are only 2 stops between Akihabara and Minami-Senju (my stop) on this line and the train runs faster as well. It is the only train that I have seen so far with a barrier between the train and the platform. Gates in the barrier automatically open when the train is in the station. It is really far underground as well. I must have gone down as least 10 stories worth of escalators to get to the platform. The train was only moderately crowded at about 5 PM so I guess the rush hour was still building up. I bought something to eat when I got off at the supermarket by the station. The sun was setting as I walked back to my hotel.