Lazy (Achy) Tuesday

It's gray and rainy outside, and I'm snug inside where (happily or not) I've hung out for most of the day, at Lorraine's apartment. I apparently pushed a little (too) hard when I was putting my suitcase away under the bed this morning, and might have re-strained that pesky rib muscle. Whoops! After grimacing my way around shopping this afternoon, I decided to head back to the apartment and to save the fun for tomorrow, my last full day in Japan!

But I shall report on yesterday first! Lorraine and I slept in yesterday morning (she has Sundays and Mondays off work) and I took a late morning train to Tokyo to catch the Skybus, an admittedly unique way to see the city. The typical ways to travel in Tokyo are by foot and by rail/subway, so seeing Tokyo from the top of an open-air double decker bus gave me a slightly different view of the small area covered by the Skybus. We rolled past the various gates to the Imperial Palace, past the Diet Building (the national legislature) and down one of the main streets in Ginza. During the Ginza portion of the tour, the kimono-clad woman seated next to me and I communicated best, exclaiming to each other, "Mikimoto! Chanel! Harry Winston!" - to give you a sense of what kinds of shops are in Ginza. Not that it's really a departure from the other places I've browsed around in Japan.

After the tour, I took the Tokyo Metro a quick two stops to Yasukuni Shrine, one of the most controversial places in Japan. Originally built in memory of supporters of the emperor who were killed in the 19th century, it was re-dedicated as a shrine to the war dead from World War II - including war criminals and others whose memory antagonizes both Allied countries and the citizens of countries that Japan colonized. The conservative prime minister of Japan, in the last fifteen years, took to making "official" visits to Yasukuni and rankled those who don't want to glorify Japan's actions in WWII. So I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I got to Yasukuni to see the shrine or the museum that accompanies it.*

The shrine itself is pretty low-key, in that there were no overtly political messages displayed -- the layout was two impressively huge torii gates leading up to the inner shrines, the only unique thing being the imperial chrysanthemum seals on the doors. I didn't venture too far inside the shrine, as there was a service (possibly the funeral service of a Japanese veteran?) taking place. Instead, I walked to the museum, where I forewent the 800 yen admission fee and browsed around the gift shop and the main level.

As a young American tourist, there's not much that I can claim to get upset about, but I noted that a display for a restored Japanese fighter plane still spoke about it having shot down the "enemy Chinese" during the Sino-Japanese wars. The gift shop sold both peace doves and Japanese flags with the rising sun... and, interestingly, memorabilia for Japan's Self Defense Forces (their military, which must be strictly self-defensive according to the post-war Japanese Constitution.)

Meanwhile, Lorraine's mono morai was finally taking a turn for the better, so we met up after her Japanese lesson and after my visit to Yasukuni for a fabulous, more up-beat day of shopping near Tokyo Station. Japan's department stores are supposedly famous for their courtesy and service. We chose to visit the original, flagship Mitsukoshi store in Nihombashi, which is a little bit worn around the edges but still features an amazing food/grocery floor in the basement and a genuine, white-gloved elevator operator in the antique Otis elevators. I bought a gift for my mom here (hi Mom!) as supposedly gifts from the flagship Mitsukoshi are more highly valued than the same items from other Mitsukoshi's.

Lores and I walked through Ginza (past the Mikimoto which I had ridden by in the Skybus - there was a pearl tiara in the window!) and caught a train to Roppongi. Roppongi is the "gaijin" district of Tokyo, the international section which understandably also is home to half of the foreign consulates/embassies in the city. A lot of folks I've talked to speak of Roppongi somewhat disparagingly, but I'd heard fun things about it from my aunt at home and in the guidebooks. As we stepped out of the Roppongi Station onto an escalator under a glass dome, my first thought was "southern California" :) Very modern sandstone architecture, lots of glass and pavilions in the area around the station and on the approach to Mori Tower, our destination in Roppongi Hills.

We purchased expensive tickets to the "Da Vinci Code Museum", an impressively staged marketing scheme in the Mori Arts Center. The galleries projected works of art featured in the film onto the walls, and also had "artifacts" from the film as if they were real.

After being thoroughly made to want to see the film and re-read Dan Brown's book, we went to grab a bite - or more, see the views - from the Museum Cafe. All of the galleries in the Mori Art Center are on the 52nd floor overlooking Roppongi and the rest of Tokyo. The nightlights of Tokyo were fantastic as we sipped our drinks and nibbled at tapas. Definitely a cool end to our shopping day.

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* In typical Marisa fashion, I took an excellent class on memories of World War II in the USA and Japan in my last year at UCSC. Narratives about WWII history differ notably between the two countries, as both struggle to accurately - and to an extent, honorably - talk about what happened in the 1930s and 40s, and to justify their actions. The Japanese educational system has been notoriously criticized for omitting events such as the massacres in Nanking or the colonial mentality of 1930s Japan, from its history textbooks. So it follows that its public memorials have also been scrutinized and sometimes revised. The Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima tries to navigate around this by emphasizing the city's role in the peace and anti-nuclear movements, but is this enough? How much ownership does modern Japan need to take of the events of the past?

And now for a brief word about what we did this morning -- we visited the World Headquarters of Aikido! Though we both sat out - me with my snuffling cold and Lorraine with her eyelids - it was pretty spectacular to watch the Doshu (the head of aikido, who's the grandson of the founder of aikido) teach.