Day 7 – Thursday
We traveled to Shinjuku today to explore the area. The highlight was the little rabbit warren of six-person bars, there’s about 100 different places in one block and apparently they are about to be torn down to make way for new apartments, larger bars and other new industries. Unfortunately we were there too early to actually go into any of them. This area is in direct contrast to the gleaming towers across the other side of the railway tracks, a mere 5 minute walk away.
Walking around we found a gallery doing a retrospective on Berthe Morisot who was Manet’s wife and a very prolific artist in her own right in the Impressionist time. This nis the gallery of the Japanese company which spent an exorbitant amount purchasing Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting. They also have a Paul Gauguin and Paul Cezanne pictures in the same highly protected room. It also featured a very interesting Japanese artist who was inspired by Pablo Picasso and actually went to both Spain and France during his younger years before returning to Japan and becoming an Art Professor and curator of a major art award in Japan (which he also won many times). They also featured a black American painter called Grandma Moses who was the 3rd child of 10 and had 10 children of her own (of which 5 died before the age of 2) and didn’t start painting until she was 58 yrs old. She had her last exhibition around the age of 95 and lived until she was 101! Amazing life and quite good work too.
We saw a few fancy shopping complexes and unlike in Australia – obviously Bulgari, Chanel and Cartier have no problem being represented in 3 or 4 major department stores around town. We went to Isetan and Odakyu (which has its own train line!) and got a few presents and wandered around, just like at home.
Starving, we eventually had a late lunch at ‘Pepper Lunch’ where you go to a vending machine and choose your meal from a very tiny picture. We had quite a nice lunch for only 1500 yen for 2 of us.
We got home in time to change and pick up the tickets for our Baseball Match. The Konami Cup Asia Series 2007 game between the Tokyo Dragons and the South Korea Wyverns. We were two of 20,000 attendants for a very noisy and dramatic match but boy does baseball take a long time! For those of you uninitiated, it has 9 innings each side which take anywhere from 20-30mins per team. Last night’s match took 3h34m to be completed. At one point we thought the Japanese team might not score and be very embarrassed but they got 3 runs. South Korea had a really great match and they got 1 home run and 6 runs all up. The enthusiasm of the fans is amazing and we captured some on video as well. However they seem very polite as each cheer squad who are very loud, only cheer when their team is batting, rather than in Australian Rules and Australian Basketball, you might actually cheer when the other team is going for a goal to put them off! They had musical instruments, those straight balloons that you clap together, clackers and all manner of flags and special signs. It was a whole production. We thought maybe South Korea might only have a token effort but NO, they had a full contingent. We later found out there was a rally in Tokyo by the Koreans about getting full visa/ voting rights if they are long term residents of Japan on Wednesday, so it tied in nicely for a trip across the ocean.
Day 8 – Friday
This morning we went to Akasuka to see the various Shinto shrines and gardens. We also wanted to see the famous Kaminarimon (Thunder Gate), which is the entrance to an old-fashioned market which has been operating for over 200 years. Beyond that is Senso-Ji shrine. Outside the shrine there is a place to check your fortune from a bamboo box of sticks. Unfortunately both Mark and I got ‘Bad Fortune’ comments. There are apparently ‘Great Fortune’, ‘Moderately Good Fortune’, ‘Good Fortune’, Moderately Bad Fortune’ and our one.
After trying to enter the Hidden Garden, which was unfortunately closed we walked through the backstreets of Akasuka and found the wholesale food district and bought some fake food for home! They sure pay a lot of fake food. Most of this goes into the windows of restaurants and café’s so you know what you’re ordering. As an example, a full dish of soup with pork, prawns, noodles and vegetables might cost about 150,000 Yen ($150 AUD) or more to put together.
Mark was also happy as he got to see the Asahi building which was designed by Philippe Starck.
From there we walked to Ueno Park about 2 suburbs along, which has a huge pond which is so covered in tall lotus flowers that you can’t see the water. We found the Shitamachi Museum which was operated by volunteers. The woman at the counter offered to explain the sites to us in English. We saw examples of both the merchants’ houses and the tenement houses that would have existed since the 17th C in Edo (Tokyo). She spent nearly 45-mins with us and we did another fortune reading and both of us got ‘Good Fortune’ readings. Then we went for a walk through the park and saw some of the other structures including a 5 level temple and various other museum buildings.
For dinner we went to Restaurant Tanga (about 10-mins from the apartment) for a ridiculously expensive Private Dining experience. We had a space that was as nig as our bedroom/ lounge room in the apartment. This would be considered very substantial and luxurious but we saw there was actually another private dining suite that was at least 3 times as big. Everything is very discreet and subtle. We had 2 waiters serving us and they spoke quite good English. Even though we ordered off the ‘a la carte’ menu (entrée, main, dessert for Mark and main, dessert for me), they still served us a palette cleanser (Japanese apple), an amuse guele (fondant of fish & potato and a shot glass of aerated potato and pumpkin mousse). After dessert they also served us 2 trays of petit fours as well, which we struggled to eat. It was all lovely food and Mark thought he’s had the best pork dish of his life. Over all, the quality was great but not as strong as Era Ora in Copenhagen which we ate at two years ago for another stupidly expensive and luxurious meal. At least this time we didn’t get the currency conversion wrong. In fact, the price came in cheaper than we thought. Although I wouldn’t know as I never saw a price, we realized as I was having coffee that my menu had no prices but Mark’s did. At the end, they handed the bill to Mark for about 5-secs under the table top and when he came back with the credit card slip, it was enclosed within a lovely little envelope which had the detailed bill in English to take home.
Even though we’d eaten and drunk more than enough (one glass of lovely French Non Vintage Champagne and a bottle of French Pinot Gris 2002), we took a taxi to Akasaka Grand Prince Hotel for a cocktail at ‘Top of Akasaka’ Cocktail lounge on the 40th floor. We had a great view and then eventually arrived home about 12.30am and off to bed. Tomorrow’s our last day and then home.
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