Out and about in Harajuku and Shibuya

So before I embrace a few zeds in preparation for tomorrow, which will be the first day of the Science Performers' exchange, where we will visit Miraikan for the first time, meet our Japanese collaborators for the first time, and get down to business making the show, here's our arvo...

We strolled past the Odaiba Statue of Liberty to Aqua City, our local mall, found the food court and some lunch, which for me meant tempura fish, cuttlefish and vegetables. Finished off by a visit to the jersey-becapped ladies of Moumou,


Who created for me a Hallowe'en special, yes complete with finely diced pumpkin. Mitsuru informed me that the island of Hokkaido is famous for its cows and dairy and, clearly, its ice cream too.



Then we spent a few hours riding the trains and walking the streets, which also means walkways and boulevards. For a city with so many BIG, and some gargantuan, buildings, I got a real sense of space today in Tokyo, of the architecture having room to breathe, of sky being part of the city.

At may points Mitsuru would stop and 'consult' with us as to where to go next,



But it was always clear to me that he had a

By 4pm he had got us to the top of 'New Government Building No.1', via its lift that climbs 45 floors in 55 seconds (that's Tokyo Time, folks!), joining many other locals, tourists and members of the Japanese National Parks Service gazing down god-like over this sprawling, Godzilla-fearing metropolis.

Yes, the train system is bewildering to me right at the present (so many lines! some government! some private! so many exits at stations! how is it possible to make sense of it all?)
but with a bit more practice, and the kind help of Chris' mate PASMO

I reckon I'll get there. Maybe.

We sauntered the main drag of Harajuku, diving in and out of sock shops and dodging creperies, of which there are Very Many.

(We were walking down 'Meiji Dori' when I saw - but yes!- a Paul Smith shop! Heck! I dodged inside, all thongs and shorts and t-shirt, and nabbed me some very natty socks. Two to be precise. Photo to follow)

Thence to the big, big, many-screened, many, many peopled (it's Tuesday night, folks! Shouldn't you be home watching telephone directory juggling or something?) Shibuya... Junction? Crossroads? Convergence? Whatever it is, it was certainly very crowded, and crazy, but somehow also calm. No sense of incipient violence beneath the surface. Rather, what seemed to me to be playing behind people's faces was curiosity. Humour. Interest. And by gum, such beauty: the people, their clothes, their costumes... an aesthete's delight.

After a fine downtown (?) downstairs meal, accompanied by Suntory beer and Plum Wine and a bottle of Shioju, we made our way back to the subway, stopping by the line of people holding 'FREE HUGS' signs across their chests.

We caught the JR Yamanote line back to Shimbashi station, and it was on this stretch that I caught my first, much anticipated glimpse of a young bloke reading his manga on the train. A baseball story in a mag called 'Big Comic'. A weekly, 350 pages for 300 Yen (about $3.50 Australian), which I then needed to nab on the way back to the hotel.

But not before very roughly sketching our crew as reflected in the window of the driverless train that brought us to Daiba station tonight. Inked, again roughly, here tonight with the Pentel black ink nylon brush bought today at one of the very many ...'everything' shops...

Getting to Tokyo

Thanks to Susan and Joseph and Zebedee for dropping me off at Tullamarine. Chris Krishna-Pillay and I flew together to Sydney, where we met the rest of the crew:


Above from left to right is Mitsuru, Kate, Chris on the phone, Cathy, Peter and Patrick. We nabbed us a snack, we misplaced and then found a suit, and then it was onto QF21 for the nine and a half hour flight to Tokyo.

I read a bit of the Tokyo Time Out guide (thanks H and Torrie), then needed some fiction so turned to John Barth's 'The Sot Weed Factor' (1961) which I've always meant to read and had finally began on Saturday on Phillip Island. Some great language in there so far, including this exchange between Henry Burlingame III and Ebenezer Cooke, 'over small beer after dinner':



The sun came up over the Pacific, and we dived down to Nariba Airport where we had a couple of breakfasts: my first was a BOSS can o' coffee and a red bean paste bun. It was very tasty and I was very lucky: it could have been anything...

From the airport it was 100 kilometres and about an hour and a half to Odaiba Island (built on a pile of rubbish in Tokyo Bay - hmm, I will check on that). It's a fairly recently constructed place and has quite a Canberra feel (quick note: I am a Canberra fan). Our hotel though, the 'Grand Pacific Le Daiba' is constucted on the Opulence and Elegance school of architecture - zow. Ee.

A quick shower to rinse a couple of plane trips and a bus trip off (looking down into Tokyo Bay the while, la di da) and then... the nightshirt.

I'm sure it has a Japanese name.

Okay, time to head down, meet the others and have an explore.

Next: the wonder of toilets.