Tokyo–March 20, 2016

First, here’s a picture of the hotel room. I wasn’t kidding when I said it was small.

I went to a place called Andersen at the train station for breakfast. On the way there, I saw the sculpture that you see in the first picture. It doesn’t look like much, but it turns out to be a set of wind chimes. As to the breakfast, I knew the pastry on the right was something chocolate, but I just randomly chose the one on the left. I turned out to be a ham egg and chese bun.

After breakfast, I went to Yodobashi Camera to buy a data SIM card for my phone. You can get a one-week card with a 1GB limit for about ¥1920, which is a bargain compared to Verizon wanting something like US$40 for 100MB of data per month. The only disconcerting part was the music playing in the background—“Battle Hymn of the Republic” set to a swing tempo.

I decided to walk to the Asakusa district and found myself in an arcade of lots of shops. The second picture shows what must be the most disturbing baby dolls I have seen. There’s quite a lot of artwork and clever/cute signage.

Old style Japanese artwork on signposts.

traditional Japanese art on sliding steel store door

traditional Japanese art on store entrance door

At some point I found myself in front of Don Quijote (referred to by the locals as “Donki”), a store with just about everything you could imagine, from food to bicycles.

Mannequin with horse head mask advertising bicycles

After a bit of shopping, I got to Asakusa park, home of the 5-story pagoda and Senso-ji temple. (The website’s picture of the pagoda turned out much better than mine.) Herewith some photos:

roof of sensoji temple; gold designn and tilework

There were a lot of open-air food stalls, so I had some fried chicken (very good) and tai-yaki, a pastry in the shape of a fish, filled with sweet red bean paste. No pictures of that, sorry, but here is one of the food stall signs:

Kappabashi

On the way back, I took a side street to Kappabashi, which also had interesting signs:

Every couple of buildings were these pictures of whimsical creatures. I took a lot of pictures, but won’t bore you with all of them. From these, you can get the idea.

It turns out that I had passed the south entrance to Kappabashi when I was walking to Asakusa; I was struck by these buildings. The Niimi tableware company really thinks big.

Giant cups on side of building that houses a tableware company

Giant head of man wearing toque on top of another Niimi building

Miscellanea

More things that I saw on the way back. The last picture is from a small temple about 2 blocks from the hotel.

signage meadow with flowers and buddhist shrine

Today’s Signage

The sidewalks are marked off for pedestrian and bicycle usage. The bicyclists don’t pay much attention to this. For that matter, neither do the pedestrians. But it all works, somehow.

Best. Sign. Ever. The theological implications are staggering.

When I was in Japan some 35 years ago, about 70% of all males smoked. That’s not the case any more, and there are now smoking areas outside buildings instead of everyone just lighting up everywhere.

Sign on sidewalk reading “Please do not smoke while walking”; illustrated with a walking cigarette.

A sticker on a utility box, and a failed attempt at correct Spanish.