Pictures From Tokyo

Wow, I have been so slack recently. I went to Tokyo weeks ago. Why am I only uploading the pictures now? Inexcusable.

First here are some pictures from the Edo Museum:

This is the Rakugo stage

This is a tiny model of a palace that doesn't exist anymore.

This is me in a replica of a nobleman's palanquin

Lots of little Edo people. Aren't they cute?

This is a full-scale model of an Edo period workshop in a nagaya (Japanese style terrace building)

This is a full-scale model of a family in a one-room home in a nagaya building. The wife has just given birth and the grandmother is washing the newborn infant in the traditional way.

A full-scale model of a Kabuki actor

Another Kabuki mannequin. By the way like Elizabethan actors, all Kabuki actors were men.

Yet another Kabuki mannequin. This guy is so cool. He was very imposing in real life (not that he's alive - you know what I mean).

Now for some pictures of the Ghibli Museum:

You recognise this guy Gillian? This is the robot thingie from Laputa. You can find him on the roof of the museum.

This is also from Laputa. It seems that when the castle broke up, one of the blocks landed on the roof of the museum.

The museum entrance

The side of the museum. Isn't it wonderful? All museums should look like this.

Museum sign/lamp post. I love lamp posts. I think it's a Narnia thing.

It's Totoro! Really! He is life-sized and everything.

And now for some random photos:

The view from my hotel room; the less garish side of Shinjuku.

A Noh mask in the National Museum. This is the only photo I took there. I should have taken more because I was allowed to, but for some reason I just couldn't quite believe my eyes when I saw all the 'Photography OK' signs. I mean, how many museums in the world that display priceless relics of passed ages allow photography? Not many, that's for sure.

The back side of the shops that line the road leading up to that big temple in Asakusa which I keep forgetting the name of.

A view across the river from the Asakusa ferry terminal. Apparently this is the headquarters of a beer company, although it seems as if the building is known to most people as 'unko biru' (the poo building). That's Japanese humour for you. Incidentally, the New Tokyo Tower is going to be built near here.

This is Venus Fort in Odaiba, the ultimate in female shopping experience (or so they say). The ceiling actually changes colour from day to sunset and back again. Umm, yeah.

This isn't the best photo in the world but I thought I would include it because that hazy curve of land you can just see is Nikaho City. My house is down there!

Mount Chokai among the clouds.

A zoomed picture of Chokai. Notice all the snow, and remember that this photo was taken in June.

The Blue Line

After we had finished eating our lunch at Kuriyama, we went for a drive up the Blue Line. It is a road that snakes up one side of Mt. Chokai to the fifth stage and then goes down the other side. The parking lot at the top of the Blue Line is as far as you can go up Mt. Chokai in a vehicle: you want to go further, you gotta leg it. Fifth stage is at nearly 1500m, which makes the 380m of the hills I pass over each week to get to Kamagadai seem piddly. I saw the wind turbines of the Nikaho Plateau from fifth stage, and they looked so far down. Near the top the Blue Line, even in May, is enclosed in huge snow walls. It takes until well into summer for the snow to melt away.

This photo is very hazy but you can just see the wind turbines on the Nikaho Plateau. To the right of them at the edge of the photo is Kamagadai.

Wow, I'm on an only semi-dormant volcano . . .

Yes, I stood on the edge of a huge cliff on slippery snow to take this photo. But I was inside the safety boundary, I swear . . .