Meeting Gillian and Kikuko-chan at Shimbashi station to head over to Odaiba for lunch went reasonably well to plan – Kiko even apologised for turning up four minutes late, which seemed a little overenthusiastic (especially considering I think she was waiting upstairs while we were downstairs).
The Yurikamome line takes us over the rainbow bridge and around to Palette Town where we get off to try to find some lunch. Restaurant hunting is so much less daunting with someone who speaks the language, we found a Japanese style place with Latin music and inconvenient ceiling decoration.
The History Garage was still showing the chrome and fins of American classics, I hope they’ve got some other cars there next time I’m back…I was pleased to see they’d extracted the DeLorian a little from its fruity predicament.
We walked back through Venus Fort to the Toyota showroom where we only had a quick look this time, and out the back door where we ran into the queue for a Rancid gig. The punks here being well behaved and queuing between boards showing the number of people ahead of them in the queue…theres normally quite a milling chaos back home as everyone either pillages the local pubs or distresses the corner shop owners or whatever. We had to make two passes since our first attempt would have lead us to the endless industrial wasteland of one of my previous visits to the area.
Over the fence at the back of Palette town we found our way around to the dream bridge, a glorious wide structure leading to some avenues for fake French style weddings. We nearly confused ourselves between a water museum and sewerage works, a potentially embarrassing mistake.
Back toward the bayside over the teleport bridge and into the old style shopping arcade, where we learned about how things used to be. We got apricot freezy sticks, a balloon from the balloon puddle (fished out with a bent paperclip tied to a piece of rice paper), (some of) the history of Hello Kitty, to take part in a spinning top battle and to hear about public televisions (from the days before everyone had one in their home). It was a great experience to be shown around by a local person.
Down to the beach for sunset, the view of Fuji through the tower blocks with the sun setting behind it is one of those “I have seen things you would not believe” moments…sure, its not quite attack ships on fire, but sunset over Tokyo bay is, somehow, bladerunner.
Onward to the statue of liberty, I was interested to note Kiko-chans view on its installation – she seemed to dislike it, and to express most of the feelings I felt when I first saw it, mainly “Why do we need Americana?”.
Coffee turned into something of a mission at this point, I suspect I was getting tired and needed to sit down for a bit. We got a table with a reasonable view across the bay, even though its wasn’t one of the ‘good view’ tables.
After this we decided to talk a walk around HongKong town, upstairs in the other mall, where Kiko-chan was pointing out some of the differences between Japanese and Chinese culture – again, stuff that I wouldn’t notice without some input from a local of one or other culture. There were some fortune tellers in the space where the martial arts were last time I was there – there must be different shows and things happening there all the time.
We made a quick dash for Ginza after this, in the hope of getting to the Kabuki theatre. We made it to discover that it was a traditional Japanese dance rather than the normal Kabuki. But having climbed four flights of stairs I was prepared to pay to watch dancing even if it wasn’t what I’d expected.
The theatre is strange – you can pay to see just one act of a play rather than the whole thing. Which makes it much more attractive for me, since there is no way I’m really going to understand anything anyway and four hours of watching would probably be too much. Dipping in for short pieces like that is much better.
The play/dance was a little strange, there were a set of seven or eight people on one side of the stage playing instruments and singing the story, then one guy playing two parts (sometimes he wore a mask and sometimes not) with a few other dancers and players around. None of it made any sense, but I was having fun watching to audience, looking at the theatre structure, figuring out the scene changes. A great thing to see, and a lot less scary than the theatres back home. (Kiko-chan works with theatre – lighting design – so she probably has quite a blaze attitude to it anyway, but even so it seemed far less formal)
Once the play was over we went to find some more food – downstairs again this time, and into another rooftop theme place (maybe theres a logic there somewhere). This time a more traditional Japanese restaurant, where Kiko-chan helps us through the menu to find nice sushi for Gillian and Neil-friendly food. Recommended, though likely near impossible to find again.
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