Juxtaposition of old and new

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We spent a little more time in bed this morning, Laura figured out how to steal the baseball game from the Internet, and we did research what to do for the rest of the day.

Firstly I wanted some kind of pastry, is not necessarily traditional, but I wanted some carbs in my stomach. We went up to Shinbashi station, found a "auntie Anne" like kiosk and got some cream filled puffs. Fortunately it is Halloween season, so they had pumpkin spice cream. They were pretty tasty. Also in the station we found a smoothie place that wasn't outrageously expensive, which we will probably be hitting up every morning we can.

After this we hopped a train back to Akihabara to find those last Gundams, which we did, I saved about $175 on what I'd pay in the US, so as long as I beat that on shipping I am ahead of the game.

We took the train back home. But this time went the wrong way, to ride it around the big loop and see the city. Tokyo is mind bogglingly big.

Dumped the model kits and went up our street for curry. I touched on this a little bit about Akihabara, but Tokyo, and by looking at the map most of Japan is made up of crazy irregular blocks. There are big main streets, with boulevards and multiple lanes of traffic, but there are hundreds of tiny one lane or pedestrian only roads that cross the city, and businesses front on these tiny roads. This curry place was in a basement on one of these roads.

They had one thing on the menu, and then 5 derivatives of that. They had city, curry with vegetables, with chicken, with minced beef ball, and some others I didnt understand. Laura got the basic with bone in chicken leg, and I got the beef ball thing. It can't with rice and silverware. The intention was to dip the rice into the curry, this was a great meal. Well portioned, absurdly flavorful, appropriately priced, everything about it was pretty good, and I appreciated that it was down some dark stairway in a relatively untrafficed alley.

After which we resolved to just wander around Shinbashi. We found ourselves headed towards the Tokyo Tower, and between the hotel and the turret we found 2 important landmarks:

A. A liquor store. With very fair prices considering the neighborhood.

2. The Zōjō-Ji, it is basically the prime temple for a particular sect of Buddhism. I admittedly know very little about Eastern Faiths, and without a tour guide, all I can really do is point you to wiki https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jōdo-shū .

Exploring through the compound we find the entrance the tokyo tower.

This was the first really touristy thing we did, and it was worth it. We got there around 4, no lines we went right up and took a bunch of pictures, unfortunately the super high uppermost tower is closed, so we didn't get to the 300m spot. The view was pretty spectacular.

The pictures here are my picture, and then the Plaque indicating what you are looking at out the window.

It was a little overcast so we couldn't see Mt Fuji very well, but could see the city pretty great.

I then realized that sunset is happening very soon, so we got a beer and some ice cream in the tower cafe. As evening approached the place got busier, and filled with children groups.

The sun set, and then the city lit up.

Never before have I seen such an exemplary testament to mankind's defiance of nature. Cramming 30+ million people into a single area, building that city many many stories tall, on a place that is historically earthquake prone, and making it daylight all the time. We forcibly change our environment to fit our needs, fuck you natural ecological processes.

We grabbed some beers on the way home, drank said beers, watched crazy Japanese game shows, and headed out for dinner. We ate and a not very good ramen place, and went home for bed.