Day 69 - Crossing

It felt extremely weird to wake up without an alarm after so many days either sleeping too little or not at all. The ten hours of sleep I got last night were a gift from the gods, one I am happy to have taken as halfway through the day I realised I still have two more days on my own in Tokyo at the end of the Japanese leg of this trip.

Even so, I decided I should do some sightseeing today, after spending a couple of hours catching up on writing over two very tasty cups of coffee. The first stop ticked off the list was the Meiji shrine, built in the middle of a garden often visited by Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken, as a tribute to the man who ended the last military rule in Japan and established the current political system.

The gardens are an oasis of calm in a city that never seems to stop, and even with quite a few visitors around this was by far the most serene spot I have visited in Tokyo so far. Sadly the shrine itself was covered up, as renovations ahead of its centenary are currently under way, but even so the surrounding buildings were enough to get a feel for what the next few days will bring in terms of shrines and temples. Despite a fair amount of foreign tourists, the shrine was mostly visited by locals who treated it as a place of worship, with families going as far as dressing up their children for the occasion.

Deciding to save a few hundred Yen and give my legs some exercise, I continued walking South towards the Shibuya crossing, stopping for some very tasty Gyoza and a Kirin on the way. Although partly due to the fact that today was cloudy, the streets of Tokyo clearly come alive after dawn, when the people come out and the bright lights come on, and this version of the city is undeniably photogenic.

The famous intersection is essentially a set of zebra crossings which, were it not for the few dozen tourists posing for pictures, could be anywhere in a busy area of Tokyo - so much so that one of them asked me if this was the famous crossing, since he was surprised it looked so much smaller than in the movies…

Another interesting interaction I had while taking pictures was with a self-described “artist” (then amended to “artist/bar staff”) who asked me what I was photographing (which I thought was fairly obvious) as he was “observing what people were interested in”. We then had a brief conversation, the highlight of which was his assertion that he had spent the whole day eating tomatoes and bread, as he felt that the “Tokyo diet” was depriving his body from vitamins. Had he not been holding a can of an unspecified beverage with 9% alcohol content, I would have probably asked him exactly how tomatoes and bread are a step up on any diet, but in this instance I just smiled, nodded and walked away.

On my way to the metro home I was forced to stop by a band playing on the pavement, as the combination of the skinny Japanese rockers and the colourful background was too good not to photograph. Their music ended up being quite catchy as well, which led me to stick around for long enough to be joined by a kid who, judging by his dance moves, will clearly be a rockstar when he grows up!

As much as I have enjoyed exploring Tokyo on my own, I must say I am looking forward to Pete’s arrival tomorrow (a day earlier than I expected). While I probably would enjoy travelling on my own for an extended period of time, I do like people and after having been accompanied for the rest of my trip it does feel weird to have such limited human interaction for an entire day. Obviously this would probably lead me to meet more new and interesting people if I were to travel on my own for a while, but for now it has just made me more receptive to conversations with drunk artists while watching many people crossing the road at the same time…

Cheers,
J-Wowww