Day 21 - Final Day

Last night we searched ten different stores for solar eclipse shades but every where was sold out. I still wanted to go this morning but Ed decided to stay in bed. I figured that maybe I can catch something on camera even if I can't look at it directly, and even if that doesn't work ill get to see all the people gawping, and even if no one cares I can just relax in Ueno park for a bit. Nothing to lose by going, except a little sleep.


Walking towards Ueno park I noted the world gradually shifting into shades of indigo. I climbed the Ueno station overpass and about fifty people stood by the sides watching the sun. I headed further up to the main platform at the top. Standing on the large platform on the roof of Ueno station crowds lined the sides and at the far end a row of stairs was filled with a chorus of sun watchers arranged like a choir.

A teenage couple enjoying the eclipse together

Some older business men paying close attention to the sun's motion

A father and daughter burning an eclipse image together

I walked close to the back but about 10 metres in front of the choir. Putting my forearm to my brow I shielded my eyes from the sun, and held my digital camera level with my eyes but tilted upwards. Looking only at the screen on the back of the camera I took photos and videos but they all looked far too bright.


After about five minutes an English or American man (i couldn't tell which) appeared next to me and said "do you need shades?". In his hands were two pairs of 'eclipse shades'. "Yes, do you have one spare?". "sure, here you go". "wow, thank you so much!" "Not at all." He said and walked back to rejoin the choir. I put on my glasses and the world turned black. I looked up and saw a perfect crescent moon. No, that's the sun! I tried to take a photo through one lens of the shades but its not designed for that purpose and the photos just came out black with an orange blurry dot. I took a normal photo and learned that it was overcast. This crescent moon was the sun piercing through the clouds.


Over the next few minutes the crescent slimmed until only a perfect orange-white ring was present, the solar corona. The crowd around me chirped up with gasps and oohs. I looked around at the people watching the sun. I looked back. it was gone. Gone? Can you go from an even ring to completely gone? Isn't the moon too small for that? Women in the crowd called out sugoi sugoi! This simply cannot be! Then it misted back into view and I realised it had been a dense patch of cloud. Even so, ordinary photos showed nothing unusual. How were ancient astronomers able to tell that there was such a thing as a solar eclipse?


Eventually the moon shifted left and seemed to rush now that the eclipse had concluded its zenith. I noticed that the sun looked orange, not silver-blue like the moon at night, And though it had dark patches on it, it had no craters. The choir began to slowly disperse. A few more minutes passed and I looked behind me for the kind man who had given me the shades, thinking to buy him a coffee as a gesture of gratitude, but he was gone. So I shall instead honour him here.

Thank you solar eclipse man!

Today I witnessed a rare astronomical event and you made it possible.



After the eclipse I asked Ed to meet me at a coffee shop before heading to a slightly famous shop called 'donki hote' (hilarious pun I know). Open 24/7 donki hote is kind of like a 5 storey combini (convenience store), in that they sell all kinds of arbitrary things: food, clothes, games, domestics etc. They had some products which amused me:

Simple as that

No argument with that comment

Right, it's that simple.

And of course, the ever popular brand 'black man'.

After the visit to Donki Hote we stopped for breakfast. I had a sashimi set (i will miss sushi when I'm back in the U.K.) with rice, pickled vegetables, miso soup, and of course complementary green tea. Very fresh, very simple food. Truly wonderful. Ed had a grilled mackerel set which also looked great.

Tuna and Scallops. Yum!

Next stop, Kappabashi. We've been before but we really only looked at the sample foods that time. This time I investigated the knives, woks, rice steamers etc. There are some wonderful things on sale, and the main customers are restauranteers. I'd love to cook Japanese food when I return but for most meals there are simply too many unavailable fresh ingredients. Quite often specialist implements are also required. Okonomiyaki should be achievable without any special tools though.


Next stop, Shibuya, and we went to meet up with Tatsuya (the Japanese student I met at the maid cafe). He asked us to meet him in front of Hachiko. Hachiko is a statue of a famous dog by the same name. Hachiko, the dog, rendezvoused with his owner at Shibuya station at the same time every day when his owner returned from work. When his owner died, Hachiko returned to the station to wait for him every day at the same time for the next nine years. For this reason Hachiko is known for his astounding loyalty. You could argue that attributing loyalty to a dog is an absurd anthropomorphism. Even so, we humans like to anthropomorphise and it's a nice story.


Tatsuya led us around Shibuya. It's a trendy part of town and though we visited at lunchtime quite a few locals were dressed to the nines. We stopped in at a cheap yakiniku restaurant for lunch. Yakiniku is thin slices of cooked pork on top of rice. As with similar such dishes as gyudon, it is delicious (and cheap).


I also tried some 'nah-to', which is apparently a traditional Kanto breakfast food. It's soya beans mixed with shoyu, mustard and spring onions. The mixture is incredibly sticky and drags like caramel, but tastes exactly as you would expect: like shoyu and mustard. I didn't really like it. 

Nah-to. Looks kind of gross; tastes like soy sauce and mustard.

After lunch we walked to Harajuku, on Tatsuya's recommendation. On the way we talked about universities in Japan, and Tatsuya indicated that Japanese universities are difficult to get into but trivial to graduate from once you're in. Apparently the student uptake is 50% of the population. Before long we arrived at Harajuku.


Harajuku is still trendy, but cheaper. There are a number of second hand clothes shops about, and the main harajuku street is filled with lingerie shops, gothic/angelic fashion shops, accessory shops, and various food establishments though it is known for its crepes! I directed us into an entirely pink shop. Everything about it was pink and girly. It's mere pinkness warranted investigation. Though mostly full of accessories and girly trinkets, it also had a row of interesting sweets. I bought some lemon and honey flavoured plums to try. On the way out Tatsuya was playing with a wig on one of the manikins and hilariously was unable to fix it so we left rapidly.

The pink shop

Further on we stopped to eat crepes from 'Angel Heart'. This shop offered a huge selection of crepes with choices of fillings both sweet & savoury, hot & cold. Ed had a chocolate ice cream crepe, I had a warm almond and chocolate crepe (mmmmm), and Tatsuya tried the ceaser salad crepe, which actually looked pretty good! Tatsuya noticed an entrance to an adjacent shrine and we looked inside.


Unusually the badge on the front entrance to the shrine featured both the emperors and a shogun's seal (though I'm not sure who). It turns out that Togo was a great naval commander who was honoured by having this badge upon his shrine.


We each bought 'omikuji', which are kind of like fortunes. You shake a hexagonal based tube and retrieve a number from the wooden stick which falls out of the hole. The number is associated with a predetermined fortune, and the overall 'quality' of the fortune ranges from dai-kichi (great fortune) to kyo (curse). with four intermediate steps. If the fortune is kyo or something similar you should take the slip of paper and tie it to a rack of wooden poles next to a great tree in the shrine. In this way you fix the fortune to the tree, and remove yourself from the bad luck. If your fortune is rather good, you take it with you, in the hope that it will come true. In addition to the overall quality there is a general message of advice and more detailed predictions and advice for specific aspects of your life (romance, work, etc.).


My overall score was sho-kichi, which is slightly good. Ed and Tatsuya both received the blessing only one point above kyo. My general message indicated that I should always remain honest, and that dishonesty would undermine my productivity/effectiveness. My 'romance' section also indicated that there was a woman who understands me (win!), and my 'children' section indicated that my children would have a safe birth but that I would need to work hard to show them love. A moderate good fortune; I'm happy to keep it. Ed and Tatsuya were supposed to tie their fortunes to the rack, but the shrine suddenly closed and we were ushered out. They will have to own their misfortune.


After this we walked to the train station, said our goodbyes to Tatsuya, and headed to the 2nd floor starbucks at shibuya crossing. For a while we people watched and took photos of anything that seemed interesting, particularly stylish men or women etc.


After an hour or so we headed back to the hostel. We packed our suitcases and prepared for the trip home. There was just one more thing we wanted to do before returning. We wanted to go back to that first yakitori restaurant. So we headed out towards Asakusa looking for the place. After about an hour we concluded that it was closed, or that we couldn't find it for some reason. What a shame. We found another izakaya and ordered some beers. When we asked about yakitori we received a positive response, so we ordered 6 skewers. After talking with the owner for a while about how this was our last night we received 'ser-bisu' Asahi beer and fried chicken. Great! After 6 or 7 bottles of beer and one victory cigar we made our way back to the hostel, very merry indeed.


Now that I am in this state I apologise for my ineloquence, but I feel that I should sum up my experiences. We humans feel a need to make sense of things and label, categorise, and box-up our information to make the world around us seem simpler.


This journey has been been long in duration and broad in geography. We have seen, despite the stereotypes, many things. The cities in Japan are dirty in some places and clean in others. Homeless senior citizens sleep in cardboard boxes outside larger train stations. Bureaucracy attempts to micro manage the activity of individuals, and advertisements subvert their spirit replacing them with empty dreams of only financial value. Some people still show the faint traces of a superiority complex over their Korean peers, or an element of xenophobia to travelers, but most do not. Almost all are outwardly polite, and the politeness is far more pronounced the further you travel from the busy city centres. In some cases the extended courtesy is a thin veneer, in others an obligation, and in some it seems to be a genuine sign of good will and fair spirit.


We have also learnt much of the culture. Some people attend the shrines and temples and most are aware of their presence, but by far the majority of locals only take part in the festivals. Universities are generally hard to get in to, but easy to graduate from, and a lot of students try to travel while studying because they wont realistically take much holiday when they are employed full time. All of the quintessentially Japanese symbols like onsens, otaku, sumo, and geishas are existent parts of the culture of which all are aware, and only a tiny fraction partake. In short, peoples lives are never as simple as we like to believe.


This journey has also reminded me of the perils and benefits of travelling with someone. Differing opinions can cause friction and stress, and differing goals will inevitably slow you down and limit what you do or where you go. Ultimately travelling with another person will thwart you from time to time, diverting you from some goals or keeping you from others. Travelling with someone also means that for every hilarious, strange, or scary moment you experience you will have the privilege of sharing it with someone you like and respect.


There is much I could say about this trip, so many 'lessons' I could claim to have learned, but if any one moral or theme has struck me particularly I would describe it as thus: Though I have seen so many strange things in language and culture here nothing, not one thing, has caused me to consider Japanese people as being in any way fundamentally different to myself, or the people I know. Sure, there are certain differences in societally informed behaviours, but none that you wouldn't adapt to if you lived in this society. As such this journey has reaffirmed my deep loathing for prejudice, and again opened my eyes to the dangers of stereotyping.


For me the sun is setting on this land of the rising sun (so cheesy I know, I'm sorry!). And I shall adjourn to the land of nod one last time before catching my flight away to the other side of the planet. I sincerely hope you've enjoyed reading my words, and I truly thank you for taking the time out of your busy lives.


Khan