I managed to get everything into my (now very heavy) backpack. I had a few hours to kill, so I decided to kill my back a little and visit a bookstore before heading to the airport.
This is one of the contenders for “largest bookstore in Tokyo” but I think it pads itself out a bit too much with the cafés and such. Three two-story buildings joined by a walkway.
Art made from trash.
The Kabuki theater in Ginza. I didn’t get to sample any Kabuki or Rakugo on this trip, so that will have to be for next time.
Be careful of the panda.
This is a thing I’ve been doing during my trip. I haven’t been able to find them at all stations (particularly the large ones), but I collected quite a few.
I then bought a ticket for the Tokyo Monorail which goes from the Tokyo Tower area to Haneda Airport.
I had many options for getting to the airport: train, bus… I chose monorail.
The monorail gives one a bit of an elevated view.
Tokyo is a city of waterways and bridges.
The cranes sticking up remind me of the little garden eels I saw at the aquarium.
There appears to be an old-time boat behind the highway.
Arrival at the airport.
🎵Monorail!🎵
My phone has been alerting me non-stop the past few days that there is a change in my activity amounts. Don’t worry, phone. Soon I’ll return to previous trends.
Now I’m just chilling at the airport. It took no time to get through security. Not looking forward to the flight itself, and I have mixed feelings about leaving, but I know my feet would really appreciate a break.
Today was my last full day. I started off by going to Tokyo Tower. It’s maybe not as cool now that Tokyo Skytree exists (Tokyo Tower is 1092 feet tall; Tokyo Skytree is 2080 feet tall), but I only wanted to visit one, and Tokyo Tower is the tower that showed up in the anime and movies I grew up with, so that’s why I wanted to see it.
There are go-karts around the corner from my hotel. Tourists put on goofy onesies and drive these through Tokyo, including the busy Shibuya Crossing.
This is the Great Gate of Shiba, which appears in a number of famous Ukiyo-E woodblock prints.
A bust of Commodore Perry, who forced Japan out of isolation. This is an incredibly flattering (if rather gaunt) bust, considering how he looked in photographs and Japanese caricatures at the time.
This is the entry gate to the Zōjō-ji temple, a Pure Land Buddhism temple.
This entire temple compound, except for the large bell, was completely destroyed in the World War 2 air raids on the city. It was rebuilt in 1974.
It’s starting to really make its size known.
Here’s some of those go-karts driving by Tokyo Tower.
They really push the message inside that Tokyo Tower is a super romantic, lovey-dovey place. Though there were also Blackpink and Digimon collaborations happening.
And now for a series of photos showing how enormous Tokyo is, and also how high up I am.
I only paid to go up to the main deck (490 feet up). For a lot more, one could pay for a tour of the Top Deck (819 feet up).
I’m not normally really scared of heights, but my legs were pretty jelly up here. I don’t think I could have handled the Top Deck.
Tokyo itself has 14 million people living in it; the metro area has almost 38 million residents.
Naturally there are the extra scary look-through-the-floor windows.
The buses look so small from up here.
A silhouette of myself as I sit and watch a movie on the history of Tokyo and the Tower.
I took the elevator up (which was fast and made my ears pop); I took the stairs down. There are approximately 600 stairs, and they count them down/up as you move flight by flight.
You get a good view of the construction of the tower via the stairs.
The guy who decided to build the tower really wanted to outdo the Eiffel Tower. The tower color is “international orange” for safety.
The tower opened to the public in 1958.
A view of the Zōjō-ji temple I passed on the way to the tower.
Finally reached the bottom; here’s a view looking straight up.
After I finished visiting Tokyo Tower, I proceeded on a whirlwind path of subway stations to hit some key tourism and shopping spots. First up, Shinjuku.
Tiny waterfall in a park bordering Tokyo Tower.
Shinjuku has a lot of entertainment places, like this castle-topped karaoke place.
Taito Station Game Arcade is a chain with locations throughout Japan, but this one is particularly big.
The real reason I stopped in Shinjuku - Godzilla!
Then I headed to Jimbōchō, Tokyo’s book district.
Books Sanseido. Sanseido publishes a lot of dictionaries; this is the main branch of their general bookstore.
Jimbōchō is Tokyo’s book district, “the world’s number one book city,” filled with new and used bookstores. It seems to sit next to a sports equipment district.
Even the subway stations at Jimbōchō are book-themed.
I then headed to Shibuya, home to Tokyo’s busiest pedestrian crossing. It’s also where one can find Tokyo’s Nintendo store.
Shibuya Scramble Crossing, “the world’s busiest pedestrian crossing” can have up to 3000 people transversing it at a time.
I guess when Inspector Zenigata isn’t chasing after Lupin (or maybe it’s what enables him to keep chasing), he’s advertising Suntory Draft Beer.
A rare quiet moment at Shibuya, as pedestrian crossing ceases and vehicle traffic is about to resume.
The traffic cops keep everything moving orderly.
Hachikō, the faithful dog that waited nine years for the return of his unbeknownst to him deceased owner.
A wall honoring Hachikō.
“No music, no life.”
Outback Steakhouse! It feels weird for an American “Australian” restaurant to exist in a country just a couple time zones off from the real Australia.
The entrance to Mandrake, full of all kinds of wonderful secondhand anime and manga merchandise, some incredibly old.
An Aliens-themed club in Shibuya.
This-a way to Mario!
It was hard picking something for my kid; I was incredibly overwhelmed with choice.
Another view of the Nintendo store.
MewTwo at the Shibuya Pokémon store.
I thought of my dad - across from the Nintendo store was a Minions-themed café.
There was a Jump store and a Capcom store on the same floor as the Nintendo store. The Capcom store had some really cool Monster Hunter x Pop Team Epic collaboration merchandise, but it was all sealed don’t-know-which-design sorts of things, so I didn’t get any.
My feet were finished at this point, so I headed back to my hotel.
A Maneki-neko art piece near my hotel.
Here’s today’s haul of goodies:
At Books Sanseido I bought “The Dictionary of Words that have Disappeared from the Sanseido Dictionary.”
In Jimbōchō I happened on a store displaying this Neverending Story movie promotional booklet.
Behind the scenes photo of the Morla puppet.
At Mandrake I got some anime art / info books for some of my favorite shows.
At the Nintendo store, I got my kiddo a bath bomb with a mystery Kirby figure inside. I got myself a washcloth with my favorite Mario baddie.
In the morning I get to play Tetris with everything, get packed up, and head towards the airport.
First, to go back to last night, I wanted to sleep but was prevented from doing so by street construction that began promptly at 8pm. Japanese culture centers around serving the community over individuals, so for them it makes sense to work at night, disturbing a few residents rather than inconvenience the flow of traffic and pedestrians during the day. Luckily they only were really noisy for a couple of hours, though the placard announcing the working times does say work will possibly happen each night I’m here.
Right outside my window. The light-up cones are kind of cool though.
The placard says they are putting in / replacing underground cables.
In the morning, I headed towards the Toshio Kashio Memorial Museum of Invention. This was the only thing, beyond my lodging, that I booked in advance and therefore had set in stone. The museum is in the middle of a very well-to-do residential neighborhood.
I can’t imagine navigating the subway with a traditional Japanese bow.
I spied Mr. Chaplin on my way to the Toshio Kashio Memorial Museum of Invention.
It was a very nice neighborhood with large houses sitting inside walls, nice cars, and fancy (though cute) “security systems”. Fun aside: every dog I saw being walked in this neighborhood was extremely determined to mark their scent like every foot. It was all their owners could do to keep them walking.
Toshio Kashio was one of the four Kashio brothers who created Casio Computers, famous for their calculators, watches, musical instruments, and electronic dictionaries. Toshio Kashio had over 300 patents, including ones for automatic scoring systems for bowling. It’s thanks to him and his brothers that we have some really cool gadgets, but also things we take for granted, like the number pad on our keyboards and calculators.
I have arrived at my destination.
The late Toshio Kashio’s house. The museum dedicated to him and his inventions takes up a third. The neighbors agreed to let it be a museum (his wish) on the grounds that it only be open during weekdays and only to small groups at a time, hence the reservation system.
Toshio Kashio liked birds, so there are stained glass windows of birds in the house. The eagle here is supposed to represent him.
The entryway. The walls, which have a bit of a wave to them, were designed to complement the sound of the grand piano that used to be here.
The bird of paradise represents Kashio’s wife.
The two birds in the stained glass are supposed to represent his children.
This is the Casio 14-A, the first compact electric calculator, from 1957. It works using a system of relays, and had four different operating modes. There are four known copies in museums (one in the Smithsonian), but this is the only fully functional copy. The numeric keypad arrangement became what is standard on calculators today.
Casio’s first programmable scientific calculator, which could handle things like square roots. The little light below the number display shows where the decimal point goes.
The first calculator you could actually put in your pocket.
The solar-powered calculator on the left is thinner than a millimeter. They let me touch and calculate on one so I could marvel at its thinness.
Casio’s first attempt at a digital keyboard.
Synth guitar from the 1980s.
Even robot boys can make music.
One of the few Casio instruments that does require professional skill to play. I got to see a video of a pro play this and the other displayed instruments.
The first Casio watch models, from 1974, which were revolutionary for being able to automatically handle dates (the user wouldn’t need to wind things when February 28 moved into March 1, for example).
These watches from 1982 had built-in Japanese-English dictionaries.
The DKW-100 from 1991 had a built-in Kanji character dictionary.
MP3 player watch and a watch that could capture/play video, both from the year 2000. My tour guide, Mr. Kobayashi, showed me some TV commercials for other models from the 1980s and 1990s, which included one that measured and stored blood pressure and one for the Muslim market that would always point you in the direction of Makkah for prayer.
His study, featuring ancient Greek mythology in the glass, encyclopedia in the case, a marble wall opposite this for acoustics, and a large view overlooking a koi pond. He was particular about every detail; an upstairs window was placed so that it would perfectly frame Mt. Fuji (now not visible due to a tree’s growth).
After my tour was done, I decided to make use of the last day of my JR Pass and head to Yokohama for the Gundam Factory, a full size moving Gundam. I think I will have to spend more time in Yokohama the next time I visit Japan; it seemed like a really cool place. The Gundam Factory was only supposed to be open until March 2023, but due to the pandemic and high demand, it was extended until March 2024, so I decided I should take advantage of that extension.
Another thing to visit whenever I come again; I had to change trains at the Noborito station in Kawasaki and this is apparently where one finds the Fujiko F. Fujio Museum, hence all of the Doraemon decor in the station.
I walked along the Nakamura river in Yokohama to get to the harbor.
I just happened upon this monument to James Curtis Hepburn, a missionary who developed the romanization system used for Japanese today and created one of the major Japanese-English dictionaries.
Yokohama manhole covers show the Yokohama Bay Bridge.
Gundam! I arrived as it was retreating back into its dock.
This is the NYK Hikawa Maru, an ocean liner that launched in 1929 but is now a permanently docked museum.
Ferris wheel across the bay.
It cost (a whole lot) extra to go up the tower for an eye-to-eye view. I chose to stay on the ground.
It stands over 6 stories tall.
This woman was taking a picture of her Ewok toy with the Gundam in the background.
A close-up of the Gundam’s head.
Perspective on the size.
The crappy thing about its location on the Yokohama harbor is that there is no shade.
The Yokohama Bay Bridge in the back; a man in the front whose two catch phrases were “Come in closer!” and “Don’t touch the white fence!”
The dock opens!
I’m not ashamed to admit that I started tearing up when it started moving.
It crouched down a bit, before rising up with determination.
Proud and tall.
It raised its hand, slowly articulating the fingers.
Final victory pose!
At 59 feet tall, this got two Guinness World Records - one for largest mobile humanoid robot and one for largest mobile Gundam.
This robot has advanced image processing that lets it assemble tiny Gundam models.
It carefully lines the pieces up.
After that I was pretty tired - both the museum and the Gundam required a good bit of walking to reach - and my phone, which drains a good bit when in map mode, was also tired, so I headed back to my hotel. Along the way, I snapped a picture of the outer gate of the Sensō-ji that I had missed yesterday.
The Kaminarimon, or Thunder Gate.
I also stopped in a McDonalds. I can’t eat anything at McDonald’s in the US, not even the fries. McDonalds, once upon a time, used to cook their fries in beef lard. Not great for vegetarians, but it’s what made their fries so yummy. Ever since people started worrying about trans fats, though, the beef lard was no longer viable, so McDonald’s replicated the beef flavor, and that beef flavoring contains milk. In Japan, however, they still use beef lard, so their fries don’t have milk and since the fries are cooked in their own frier, they also aren’t contaminated with milk from other items.
It’s the only thing I can order, but that’s one more thing than I can order at McDonalds in the US.
I haven’t had McDonald’s fries in over ten years. I wish I could say that they lasted more than ten minutes…
Now to rest up - tomorrow is my last full day in Japan, so I have to make it count!
