Mix
Sunday, August 30th, 2009
Yesterday was an interesting mix. We decided to do a walking tour of Shinjuku tower block district but didn’t realise that tower blocks are somewhat closed on Saturdays. We therefore tragically missed out on the toilet museum(!), the Pentax museum and the tokyo metropolitan government offices.
Worlds largest grandfather clock =)
We did on the other hand get to see a world record breaking 29m tall grandfather clock, weaseled our way up to the 51st floor of another skyscraper and had an exquisite sandwich in a very expensive deli.
After that was the Japanese sword museam which was very cool. They tried their best to explain the metalurgy to me but I think some extra research may be needed. There is certainly some eutectic martensitic equilibrium stuff going on, along with a soft springy core and a hard outer blade. Did I mention that as well as a zen garden I will be requiring a katana sword for my future house?
Then there was Roppongi – a legendary district in Tokyo we had heard so much about. Mostly bad stuff obviously. But it had to be sampled for ourselves. So the first bar was Gas Panic and we were their first happy hour customers which made the bar staff very happy. Dave came to suspect it was a gay bar, but with no one else about we had no way of telling. We made a hasty exit none the less.
Next up was Propoganda which does not share anything in common with Friday nights at the academy in brizzle. Instead it was a quite busy pretty cool cocktail bar on the second floor. From there we nipped over to Kingston Jamaca to finish the night.
This morning we stumbled across some weird dance/marshal arts festival parade thingy in Harajuku. Nice costumes, funny slippers and massive flags. Everyone also seemed to have some Japanese version of castenets on the go. I am now sitting in Tokyo’s pizza express as I thought it was my duty do a comparasson with the one in corn street Bristol. For my pizza conneseur friend: the dough is more spongy than back home, and there is no theo favourita. The pizzas also seem to be smaller so no real competition from overseas!
