Last day

Today was our last day in Japan. Chloe and I had breakfast with Gail and Kenji near the hotel and then said goodbye, since they had an earlier flight from Narita to China. Chloe and I decided to head to the Ginza to wander around before our 2:00 bus to the airport for our own flight to SFO, and ended up getting a little confused about which trains to take. We made it in the end, and with only a few wrong turns. Our first stop was the basement of the Mitsukoshi department store to find food for lunch. We made at least two full circuits of all the stalls



To yells of "Irashaiiii" -- what's the polite way to respond to this, anyway? Anyway, we ended up settling on some tempura and chinese food Bento. From Mitsukoshi, we went to the waffle shop, visited the Temple of Sony and headed back to Iidabashi. We walked down the street towards the Yasukuni shrine and found a little green space in between the buildings, where we ate our bentos

Soon we were on the bus, going over the endless sprawl in between Tokyo and Narita. The soundtrack was two american dudes behind us having a loud conversation about their MLM (multi level marketing?) business. Whatever it was, it must have been working since they got in the line for business class and we got in the very long economy line.

We looked out over the planes sadly as it sunk in that we would be heading back to the states in a few hours

Yasukuni, Yabu Soba, Imperial Palace, the Ginza, Kayoko

We started the day by ... sleeping in for once! This was a nice change after getting up at six AM the previous day to go to Tsukiji. We got picked up again by Kozo and Shitomi and went to the Flea Market at the Yasukuni shrine.

I selected two hundred yen rabbit tea cups, and Chloe found a pair of Japanese dolls for 500 yen. There were all sorts of things on sale: tea kettles

Masks and hatchets

Sword guards, etc. etc.
Here are kenji and Kozo taking a break

and us, with a crazy Japanese dude in his world war II soldiers uniform behind us!

The Yasukuni shrine is significant in that it is a source of some controversy, which stems from the fact that convicted war criminals are enshrined there (more on the linked wikipedia page). In addition to crazy world war II dude, there were these handsome fellowsfascist looking thugs

and later on, a parade of vans with loudspeakers


From the shrine, Kozo and Shitomi took us to one of the most famous Soba places in Tokyo: Yabu Soba.


When you place your order, a woman sings the order to the chefs! I have some video of this which I'll try to upload soon. While we were waiting, Kozo told us that the way to look cool (if you are a man) is to go to Yabu Soba alone, order a bottle of sake and Soba and eat and drink it alone. He added that this was cool during the week, but maybe not quite so cool on a Sunday! Anyway, the soba

was fantastic. It makes me hungry just thinking about it.

After Soba, Kozo showed us another famous Soba place around the corner, as well as a famous sweet shop and then dropped us off at the imperial palace, where we wandered around for a while


then went back to the hotel to rest for a bit

and took the JR to Akihabara to buy rechargable batteries for the new Canon.

Akihabara always makes me a little crazy, but the people I'm with rarely have the patience for anything more than a half hour or so. Personally, I could spend days on end there, just gazing into the mesmerising blinking lights

Next stop was the Ginza again, where we went to a waffle shop

and Kenji and Gail went to Kenji's gallery in the Ginza to talk to the manager and owner. Chloe and I left to wander around the Ginza

And happened upon the Sony showroom, where I got a chance to look at some of the new super light VAIOs


which I covet. 2.8 pounds, built in wifi, standard ethernet, bluetooth, VGA port, multimedia slot, memory stick slot... this thing is amazing. The Ginza Leica store was around the corner, and I stopped in but wasn't impressed. It was more of a shrine than a serious photographic store IMO. Listening to some british guy coo over the way a tri-elmar lens looked "Oh it's just so beautiful" made me want to puke. It's a CAMERA, not an accessory to complement your Gucci shoes! Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for the legacy of the Leica M and the images that have been produced by them. That said, I feel pretty sure that Cartier-Bresson and Capa would be shooting digital today.

From the Ginza it was time to go back to meet my cousin Kayoko and her husband for dinner.

They had scoped out the neighborhood around the hotel and found a great and inexpensive underground izakaya, and we ordered a lot of plates -- most of which were only around 350 yen! If we ever have the chance to stay at the Grand Palace again, I'll be eating there again. It was a good time and I was happy to see them again.

Later that night we saw that another typhoon was in the vicinity of Japan, but was thankfully moving east rather than west


yes, that says 35 meters per second, which is almost 80 mph.