ダニエルの冒険

I woke up before my alarm and stopped it just as it went off as I was leaving for my shower. I could hear water run down the side of the building, as the heavy snow on the roof melted. When I left the hotel, I made a beeline for the nearest 7-Eleven, trying to keep to the virgin snow (as there was less slush) and the tyre-melted snow (as there was less slush. I hate slush.) I got a 399 yen umbrella at the 7-Eleven. The clerk asked me if I’d be using it right away, and unwrapped it for me when I indicated in the affirmative, throwing out the packaging for me.

I arrived at Ryogoku an hour early and wandered around the streets looking for a McDonald’s. I didn’t find it (though I did see it later), but took a leaf from my dad’s book and entered a hotel for refuge. I ate a slightly overpriced steak with a pathetically small serving of vegetables, but it tasted really good. I relaxed in the restaurant for a short while, identifying the synthesised piano arrangements of songs. I recognised the Titantic Theme by Céline Dion and 見えない星 (Unseen Star) by 中島美嘉 (Mika Nakashima). At 12.40pm I went to the lobby and read more Jumper for ten minutes, before heading to the station at 12.50pm. The homeless man I’d seen when leaving the station earlier was still there. He didn’t raise his eyes from his paper.

I met up with Daisuke at Ryogoku station and we went to the Edo Tokyo Museum. My shoulders and legs hurt by the end, but it was really worth it. Everything from the foundation of Edo (Tokyo’s old name) right through to the 1964 Olympics was covered. Some of the most interesting points including seeing the Japanese writing change over time as I moved through the exhibits, from basically Chinese, to just hiragana for girls, to a mixture of large kanji with small katakana conjugating verbs and acting as particles. Modern Japanese uses all three scripts. The roman alphabet is also used frequently. There were some amazing dioramas too, which are in the photos.

After the museum we went to a small Chanko restaurant. There were no chairs, but mats. My mouth left the complaining to my back. I can’t find an explanation of Chanko online, so let me try. It’s a dish eaten by Sumo wrestlers (“rikishi”). Ryogoku is famous for Sumo and in the expensive Chanko restaurants you can often see the Rikishi eating, apparently. The meal was reasonable, but Daisuke refused to accept more than 1000 yen as a contribution to it. We didn’t see any Rikishi. Chanko itself is, like many Japanese foods, made by yourself. In many restaurants here, either the food is just eaten raw or you cook it yourself. They must save a small fortune on chefs.

A selection of vegetables and meats (chicken and pork) are in a large (5 litre?) bowl. A smaller bowl, maybe 3 litres, is put on a gas cooker and half-filled with soy-sauce. We could also choose miso or salt. This is heated, ingredients added, you wait and eat. It was pretty good but the best part was at the end, when we received a bowl of rice each, which Daisuke dumped into the remaining “soup”. When taken out, the rice tasted really nice and I had about 3 bowls of it.

Afterwards we walked back to the station, passing the Sumo stadium. Daisuke accompanied me as far as Tokyo station, helping me walk through the maze of tunnels between Otemachi’s subway platform and Tokyo station’s Shinkansen ticket stand.

On the Shinkansen, I was sitting beside a 28 year old secretary, who, as usual, looked 4 years younger than her actual age. She had been in Bristol for a month when she was in university but has forgotten all her English, but is thinking about starting again. She was in Tokyo to go on a date with her boyfriend. They went to see Sweeney Todd. The previous weekend, she also met up with him in Tokyo for a date. They went to Disneyland. Two weekends in a row we made the same commute to do the same activity… pretty amazing! The journey was the fastest Shinkansen trip yet, and I was home before I knew it. It being crazy cold, I got a taxi back to the apartment (the walk looks much further from a car than it does on foot) and slept really really really soundly.