brain crabs

Finally, this morning, we were able to sleep past 7am. Although we were more rested and feeling more human, that meant getting a late start. After breakfast, we took the subway to Asukasa, the end of the line, to visit the Senso-ji Temple. It was somewhat hidden from most main access roads so we had to meander through some winding backstreets, filled with assorted tiny shops that occupied structures that appeared to be left over from an older Tokyo. Suddenly, the backstreats dead-ended at a low wall with wooden gates breaking up the lines of stalls against it. We followed the wall to an open gate and a narrow boulevard of stalls leading up to the temple. The temple complex was.. Well, just wait and see the pictures. It’s such an unimaginably beautiful place that I felt like I walking into a movie. I just don’t have the words for it. At all.
I’m starting to realize that ultra-amazing and understatingly splendind are par here.
At any rate, we managed to drag ourselves away from the astounding scene of the temple and drifted back through the web of small streets in the surrounding neighborhood. We exited through a different way than we entered and found out pretty quickly that our map was more than a little incomplete since it didn’t even show most of the streets we were on. In no hurry, we made it back to a more major road and wound up running into a pair of Australian back packers who, with the help of their Lonely Planet guide (of course), got us pointed in the right direction. We strolled in the direction (eventually) of our next destination. At first, we walked about 15 minutes in the wrong direction. Once we got pointed in the right direction, we were informed by the waitress in the (casually ultra-slick-minmal-understated-traditional-pre-fab-cutting-edge-over-designed-looking-but-utterly-unimpressive-by-Tokyo-standards) restaurant at which we stopped for a lunch of noodles, that we hald walked off of our map. She indicated a couple important landmarks and gave us some universally comprehensible directions. Too bad they don’t accept tips here.
Anyway, just as we were becoming fearful that we had misinterpreted her directions, we saw the brilliant glow of our quarry from across the street: We had found the plastic food mecca.
Let me first say that any worth while restaurant in Tokyo, pretty much regardless of it’s quality or standing, has a handsome display of hyper-realistically rendered plastic examples of the dishes you can obtain at that establishment, presented just as the chefs present it. We found where it all comes from. The bright flourescent lights glint off of the trump l’oiel surfaces of the un-food in the claustrophobic store. Imagine a grocery store that has been put in a trash compactor and shrink-wrapped. Imagine the perfectly organized piles of vibrantly colored meals that will never rot. It’s a kelidescope of food that nobody will ever eat.
After marveling at that, we made our way back on the subway.
We stopped for coffee (it was great, of course) and then hung out with Scott at the apartment until dinner. We met Marcia at a nearby udon noodle place (it was great, of course).
After dinner, Bec and I checked out a book store in Ropongi. There were so many beautiful contemporary books that were made with interesting paper, bound in clever ways, with such enticing content that we couldn’t spend very long in there. We feared that we might buy everything. We might have to go back before we leave, though. I saw a couple things that I might not be able to pass up. I might have to take advantage of how great that book store is.
Another full day.

This entry was posted by jon on Monday, December 12th, 2005 at 9:35 am and is filed under personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.