Day 33: A Life Changing Experience

This is a long one, so strap in.

I woke up in the morning after a nice seven hour jet lag sleep, and made my way to lunch. I found a nice place that serves pasta, so I got some with tomato sauce and bacon. A great start to the day. As someone with food allergies, I have to point this out. The waiter I had today in Tokyo was the first person I've met on the trip so far who asked if I was allergic when I told him "no cheese." Nice work Tokyo.

From there, I went to Sensoji Temple. This is something I knew I wanted to see coming to Tokyo, a traditional Japanese temple. You know the one, red wood, shingled roof, really awesome looking. So I wandered around the temple for a while, admiring the impressive architecture. There was also a sizeable koi pond in the middle of the area. The temple had a lot of different monuments, graves, and statues. I remember one statue that had a compelling story alongside it. Apparently a Japanese warrior, very skilled with a sword, repented his days as a killer, became a monk, and when he died he had a statue of himself buried in a very busy square. That way, enough people would walk on him to make up for all the people he killed. Of course, eventually they moved the statue to where I saw it today.

Unfortunately the five story Pagoda tower was under construction. Scaffolding blocked the entire building from view. I was very looking forward to seeing this tower, so I was disappointed about that.

The fish weren't this crowded, they had just gathered in this part of the pond for some reason.

I must take a moment to explain the weather today. Grey clouds filled the sky all day, with rain falling on and off. My rain jacket became useful again, but not for long. It was so warm and humid that even when it was raining, I couldn't keep my jacket on. The rain was actually kinda refreshing. It never got to the point where it was pouring rain thankfully. This weather might make the next thing that I do somewhat questionable, but don't worry about it.

After exploring the temple, I decided to go to the Skytree. It was a short twenty minute walk from the temple, and it kept staring at me from the skyline, daring me to go.

The Skytree is the world's tallest tower at 643 meters. Each of the four elevators has a different theme based on the four seasons. On the way up I rode the Autumn elevator, which corresponds to the Japanese festival season. A gold phoenix wraps its wings around the upper edge of the elevator. On the way down I rode the winter elevator, which is decorated with white clouds and a flock of grey birds. I don't really know the significance of it though.

Even with the fog blocking the distance, the view from the skytree was still great. It's always interesting to me to get a wholly different view of a city, and a bird's eye view is one of my favorites. The fog unfortunately blocked the view of Mt. Fuji, but that just means I'll have to see it another day.

The Skytree during the day.

The Skytree at night.

Cool thing about these photos; if you were to overlap them next to each other, you could get one big photo of Tokyo.

Before I continue, I have to mention a few things. I am a huge Pokemon fan, so I was excited to visit Japan, which is where Pokemon were originally created. I had also heard rumors that Tokyo had several "Pokemon Centers." I didn't know that the Skytree had one.

Apparently the Skytree Pokemon center opened on July 6th, so it's almost like they opened it just in time for my arrival. This store had everything you could imagine, pens, backpacks, hats, plushes, cards, stickers, etc.

So a few hours later I moved on.

Not really, I spent plenty of time in the store, but not that much.

On my way back through the Skytree's bottom floors, I saw an aquarium. I didn't have anything else planned for the day, so I thought "why not?"

Aside from the classic aquarium exhibits (penguins, sea lions, jellyfish) the Sumida Aquarium had two exhibits that stuck out. First was their goldfish exhibit. I had no idea there were so many species of goldfish. But the memorable part was the information about why the goldfish is significant to Japan. Goldfish didn't arrive in Japan until the late 1800s and didn't become popular until after the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05. In the years of peace that followed the war, people were living comfortably enough to get goldfish as pets. The goldfish then became a sign of peaceful times in Japan.

Even paper goldfish.

The second exhibit was a photo gallery. That's right, no fish. Well, no live fish. There were some photos of fish. Takashi Amano spent several years in the Amazon taking brilliant photographs of the rivers. I could talk more about what I liked, but it seems fitting to just include some of his photos here:

Just to be completely clear, I didn't take those last three photos, I did take all the others though.

After the aquarium I started walking back towards the hostel. I found a place that served cheese-less pizza and had dinner. When the pizza showed up it had small bits of fish on it. Fortunately not enough to be a real problem. No offense to anyone that likes fish on their pizza.

Who knows what will happen in Tokyo tomorrow. Only time will tell.

Well I do have to do laundry in the morning, but other than that who knows.

Thanks for reading, and here's to tomorrow.