Todays excursion was to Tokyo Station. I was rather hoping there would be something else there, but there isn’t, its just a station. A very big station, with a never ending string of silly toy and present shops and food places in a long thin mall underneath. Continuing with the trainspotting theme I was disappointed that the Tokyo Station Gallery was closed, I was hoping to get a decent view of the passing (and terminating) traction action, seeing as I’m missing Tallington this year.
If you’ll excuse the art (you’ll need a fixed width font to make this work):
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I’m impressed, I knew it was mechanically possible but I’d never seen it done before.
After being underwhelmed by Tokyo station I moved on to Ueno, where I was looking forward to going to the Freak Market I’d seen from the train, but it turned out to be a boring American clothing store. So I cut through the market, another of those under the tracks affairs searching for hairbands and toothpaste. I got home to discover the toothpaste smells minty but the little bundle of hairbands I thought I’d bought are in fact one long piece of elastic. Erm, not sure what I’m supposed to do with it but its almost certainly no good for tying my hair back with.
Wandering back through the under-track market I was pondering the possibility of creating a film with the levels of paranoia of Pi but set somewhere like this, a cross with Bladerunner if you will. Not sure what the premise of the film would be but I’ve got some scenes in mind already.
Over the road to another market building and I find a stall selling CDs at 100yen each (about 50p), of course this is irresistable. And I’ve no idea what I’m getting so I just base it on whether it looks cool – I’ll review them in a seperate post, they deserve one all to themselves.
High from the purchase of a small stack of random Japanese CDs I dash off further through the market. Only it turns out not to be further through the market, I’ve taken a wrong turn and gone in the back door of a sex shop. Oops. Backtrack, spot daylight, head that way.
Next, over to the park where I’m accosted by a poor chap who’s been trying all day to find English speaking people to fill in a survey for him…normally I ignore people with surveys because (back home at least) they’re actually asking for money and using the survey to get you commited to their cause. But this guy looked so fed up that it seemed unlikely he’d ask for money at the end. This was actually quite a useful exercise because I’d not known that the science museum was in the park and would have been looking for that at some point. Though, by the time I got there I was too tired and it was too close to closing to make it worth going in. I’ll be heading back there one day when I’ve got more time.
In the park I found a concrete totem pole (!) donated by the Lions (!), which seemed wholly out of place on so many levels.
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