goyablog

Well, after two very successful workdays, my first all=play-day was a bust! How can one have an unsuccessful play day? I should have called it a work day and then everything would have been fine. Of course, I exaggerate, but when one plans a stay in Tokyo around a Sunday so that one can revel in the cosplay (costume play) in Harajuku and THERE IS NONE, then something went wrong. Imagine hundreds of disappointed foreign and domestic tourist waiting around with cameras and all they have to photo is a very pathetic group of would-be goths:

and three transvestites (an Alice, a baby, and something else):

and a serial nose-picker:

Absolutely pitiful. The problem, I think, was that there was a BIG political rally at the Olympic Stadium nearby drawing thousands and thousands of protesters across the bridge in front of Meiji Jingu Park and Harajuku through the entire morning and then back around the street in front of the station in the afternoon:

So, I stood on the overpass and watched droves of people chanting “Protect Article Nine”, “Save Japanese Agriculture” “Down with Consumption Tax Increases” “Disarmament Now” and an occasional “Save the Global Environment” and “Down with American Imperialism.” I heard one reference to bases in Okinawa. It was heartening to see such a mass protest — interrupted a few times by blaring rightwing loudspeaker vans with pro-Yasukuni Shrine slogans painted on them:

but why the heck did perfectly good cosplay have to get postponed because a political rally? I mean honestly, which is more important? Inspired by the photo exhibit I saw yesterday, I was all set to capture personalities in action. I have a hard time sticking a camera in someone’s face even if I think it’s a great face for a great photo, The exception is cosplayers; they beg to have photos taken. I was going to have to come up with Plan B to salvage the day.

Plan B involved walking a big circle from Harajuku Station to Aoyama-dôri, catching the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art (a boring exhibit/recreation of rooms from a house designed by Luis Barragan (*snore*) and then coming back to Harajuku via Omotesandô in hopes of some cosplay action after the activists left. One nice suprise was running into the Design Festa HQ West, a crazy, hodgepodge, multicolored building:

Without much else going on at Harajuku, I went down to Ginza to mill about in the street and photo passersby, like these guys:

Also interesting were the pedestrians with cell phone cameras who noticed a celebrity holding an event near the display window of the Mitsukoshi. I whipped my camera to shoot them. Note the iPhone on the far right:

I had fun with the display window reflections:

I still don’t do well capturing faces; I got a few good ones, but I decided it was easier capturing feet. It started spontaneously yesterday with that Boot Girl I posted. Now I’ve expanded it into a full-fledged study of Shoes of Tokyo. I’m finding that they are as expressive and full of narrative as faces. In a sense, faces are too easy in that respect; way too obvious in the emotions and stories they display. Shoes (with feet in them), on the other hand, require more work on the photographer’s part to capture and frame them and more work on the viewer’s part to fill in the story. Look for a Shoe Series on Flickr soon. This one (“Waiting“) was the first I posted there:

I ended the day taking photos of shoes in Ginza and Akihabara, where I discovered a great doner wagon — “Star Kebab” run by real Turks from Turkey, it seems — selling sandwiches for ¥500 with your choice of sauce (I chose “White” = yogurt and garlic). That filled out a superior bowl of ramen I had earlier. I was in Tsukiji, but didn’t have sushi — can you believe that? I’m glad I didn’t because the ramen and doner made me happy.

It sure helps not to be jet-lagged and headachy. I woke up feeling good and then even better after another awesome breakfast, this time featuring marinated and grilled sanma (saury), which is in season now. I set out a little later than intended because I met Douglas the Canadian who was about to spend his first day ever in Japan and we chatted about what to see and how. I’ll take him to Harajuku tomorrow. After grabbing a coffee at Starbucks, I headed down the Ginza line to the Maruzen in Nihonbashi. The subway exit is right next door to Maruzen, which prompted another “Man, I love Tokyo.” I have to credit the clerk who helped me for quickly tracking down all but one book I was looking for. That made up some time, so I went back to the Shigetsu to dump books and grab a snack-lunch of takoyaki (“octopus balls”) at the temple approach.

So morning was books and afternoon was cameras (and manga). I claimed a spot near the intersection and took dozens of shots of the crowd before heading to Mandarake where I bought the entire set of Death Note manga. More photos of the crowds along the way to Camera Cabaret, a very cool little store specializing in toy cameras beyond Holgas and Lomos (although they had plenty of those too). They had the coolest mini digital camera based on mini 110 film cameras, but it was just too expensive once you bought a miniSD card and USB connector and battery.
That was it for Shibuya until after dinner on the way home. I had a few hours before dinner, so I went another stop down the Yamanote to Ebisu to see the Tokyo Photography Museum. GREAT exhibition “Japanese Photographers See The World.” This was part three of a series of exhibitions themed “Travel,” so it seemed appropriate to see.
I then had a big decision — with the remaining time, I had to choose between the Beer Museum, which was next door, and the Parasitological Museum another stop down the Yamanote in Meguro and then about a twenty minute walk from the station. Guess which one I chose — the parasites. I mean, how could I pass up for beer the opportunity to see a 29-foot tapeworm that was pulled from some poor guy?

Tapeworm beats beer any day of the week. As you can imagine, the parasite museum made me hungry, so I went back to Ebisu and found the real Ninnikuya (Garlic House) that I had been to long ago. Misinformation I got said they didn’t take reservations, but in fact they do and you must have them on a Saturday night. I got lucky; I think they pitied the foreigner who was waiting for a half-hour at the door and let me sit at the end of the counter, which turned out being the best spot right in front of the open “kitchen” where four guys put together the dishes with mountains of garlic. I had their famous garlic toast (six inches of a baguette stood on end with heaping garlic and melted butter on top), eggplant and garlic, and garlic pasta. I must have eaten three BULBS of garlic! Delicious!

I could have and probably should have gone straight back to the hotel after being sated with garlic, but I had to change lines at Shibuya and, well, ended up back on the street taking night photos at the intersection:

The predominant fashion among the women now is knee-high boots with knee-high or higher socks and/or shorts with leopard/stockings and boots (high or short). Something like this:

I can’t wait until tomorrow’s fashion scene — Harajuku cosplay (costume play) craziness!