I'm ba-ack!

It's Golden Week! This means we have tomorrow and Tuesday off from school for I don't know...Children's Day and something else. We would be getting more days off, but this year two of the holidays fall on the weekend (yesterday and today). Lucky us. So it's just a four-day weekend. But I won't complain :)

I'll tell you about Daniel and my mission. Most of the central JR train stations have station stamps (a total of 77) and Daniel and I are going to try to collect them all. Nay, we ARE going to collect them all. And not the easy way either. See, lazy bums with money to burn could just ride the train from station to station on the different lines to collect them all (they put the stamps outside the gate, so you would have to exit and pay the fare to get it), but we are walking to them all. After two days of walking for several hours, we can cross 12 stations off our list. And our stamp books have 19 stamps in them (one station had four stamps!) because in addition to the station stamps, if we visit a place (like a museum), we'll find and get that stamp as well. It's been a lot of fun because it's walking with purpose, but at the same time we get to explore and see places we otherwise might miss. We also get to feel super awesome and look like professional stampers because we bought our own inkpads and the rubber backing pad for extra-good prints (usually the inkpads are pretty used up so we knew that wouldn't do).

Now here are a bunch of pictures (taken on my cellphone)...

This was that day we were late to school because a bunch of lines were down. This is the line (mass) of people waiting to even get past the ticket gate...

Sorry for the horrible quality, my phone was on the wrong setting. But anyway, I was in Shibuya roaming and saw these tons of people surrounding something and taking pictures. It was this man, in a dress and the craziest hat ever. As you can maybe make out, there's a mannequin head on top. He was wearing earrings too that were clear spheres with goldfish swimming around in them. I didn't really understand what he was doing...

The 77 stamps! We have most of the first row and then a bunch in the middle. The day we started on our adventure, we started at Yotsuya (our school's station) and walked to Ueno, going through Ichigaya, Iidabashi, Suidobashi, Ochanomizu, Akihabara, and Okachimachi. Daniel's doing most of the photography for our journey, but here are some I ended up taking.

This is a building in Suidobashi, near the Tokyo Dome (where they have baseball games), that I just thought looked neat and we were waiting at an intersection, so why not?

This is the start of Tokyo Dome City in Suidobashi. It's just the area around Tokyo Dome, with shops, restaurants, rides and things.Tokyo Dome.

There was actually a baseball game the day we were at Tokyo Dome, so security was really stiff. At each intersection were groups of policemen manning each corner Storm Trooper-style (they had awesome uniforms too). As we headed out of the area, this road was a line of police cars and buses, with drivers at the ready to dispatch if needed. We actually got to witness a disturbance too and it was really exciting, but we didn't manage to get any video or pictures. Well, first of all, here in Japan, it's totally fine for people to attach huge P.A. systems and speakers to their cars and just blast music at top volume or go around speaking (yelling) about some cause, politicking, or even advertising. It's exceedingly loud and irritating. So, we were at the end of the line of police buses and I saw one police guy start waving his flag at the last bus driver to start moving, so I thought they got a call about something and were heading out. But I also caught a glimpse of this car with Japanese flags raised speeding past at the other side of an alley, so I wondered what it was doing. The next thing we know, there's a convoy of these trucks and cars with the old imperialistic Japanese flags and speakers coming down the alley towards the line of police buses. They were blasting music and spouting stuff from their speakers and clearly wanted to head down that road to go towards the Dome, but the bus was already in place blocking the entire thing. So police are running around and waving their flags and trying to prevent these anti-foreigner guys from getting near the Dome. And they did. I think I heard a gunshot too...All the vehicles had to turn around and they headed down the other way, and as we kept walking through the area, we'd see/hear a bunch of them still going at it.
I think this is on our way to Ochanomizu from the troubled Suidobashi.

This cathedral (Nikolai Cathedral) was on one of the Ochanomizu stamps, so we decided to head over there. It was closing up when we got there, but it looks pretty cool.

And this is from the inside looking out.I believe this is Kanda River, around the Akihabara/Kanda area.

At Akihabara (electronics center). The streets were closed to traffic for the holiday, though there weren't that many people, but they do that for holidays and weekends if I remember what Daniel said correctly.

Okachimachi station had some interesting vending machines. From afar, looks like a normal vending machine selling canned drinks, but up close...It's "Eki Soba," eki meaning train station and soba being Japanese buckwheat noodles. I believe these are cans of flavored broth you can use for soba dishes, but I really don't know. And I don't know why they would name it 'train station'...

Instead of junk food...

...health food! SoyJoy and CalorieMate. Maybe the U.S. should follow this path too...

And finally, a toy one! You could get tiny sumo wrestlers or vehicles or key holder things.

In between Okachimachi and Ueno stations is Ameyoko, a bustling marketplace. It apparently originated as a flea market right after WWII but now it's hundreds of small shops, a lot of them offering imports, and food stands. It was so cool to see this kind of rambunctious and less orderly (compared to other areas of Japan) atmosphere. For those who have been to Taiwan, it reminded me very much of the night market atmosphere.

And this is what I had for dinner. I splurged a bit to get the meal set (still under $10 though!) so I got a salad and corn soup in addition. It looks delicious right? And it tastes just how it looks. It's this restaurant called Pepper Lunch. This is rice and corn, I think I got curry-flavored, and meat, and it's on a hot grill plate so it cooks while you eat and keeps it hot, and you mix everything together. And now we have frequent patron cards (a lot of Japanese stores or restaurants have these, where you can get points for every how ever much you spend, or a stamp for each trip you make there, and eventually you can get something in return, be it a discount or free something), so I definitely look forward to going back!