2019 Japan Trip - Day 14 - Last Full Day

Day 14 - Last Full Day

Day 14 was my last full day in Japan.  One last walk around the block, so to speak, before going home.  

I started my day with a walk around the hotel.  Like the hotel in Sapporo, there was a bike and pedestrian path near by.  Just behind the hotel, in fact.  It ran just above the banks of the Tamagawa river.  I then had breakfast at the Grill on the 5th floor at their buffet.  Then we took the shuttle bus to Kawasaki station.  

I have a salad every day, and in Japan I usually ate it at breakfast.  That’s because I’ve found that the best salads are at breakfast buffets in Japan.  The salads I get at dinner in lunch have different ingredients that I don’t like so well.

I spotted this house walking around the hotel’s neighborhood.  I did not see any activity to indicate it was inhabited.  I got the feeling it was haunted.  By an American ghost, perhaps.  One that neighborhood people didn’t find too scary because he couldn’t haunt them like Japanese ghosts do.

Another view across the Tamagawa river.

A shrine in the area near the Kawasaki Skyfront Hotel.  I didn’t check it out beyond this one picture.

Some little leaguers at practice.  I do not see kids practicing baseball in the United States.  I see it all the time in Japan.

It was a coin-toss decision for the day’s destination.  We could go south to Kamakura and see the daibutsu, the large statue of Buddha that you could climb inside, there.  Or we could go north into Tokyo, finding some part of the city we hadn’t seen before.  The trip to Kamakura and the daibutsu was an all day trip by itself.  I had seen it already.  We opted for Tokyo and headed north.  

The first thing we thought to do was go on a cruise of the Sumida River.  It’s main river of several that cut through Tokyo.  It goes by a number of well known sites and places to visit.  It took us a while to find and get to the pier where the cruise boats took off from.  One issue you can have with GPS in Japanese cities is that they are more layered that most American cities.  At one point, while looking for a water taxi pier, our map apps were telling us we had arrived when all we could see were what looked like office and apartment buildings and the road we had crossed.  The water taxi pier was below us, behind the building we were standing before, beneath the roadway that was elevated above it.  Even when you figure out that something like that is happening, it can take some time to figure out how to get there.  

Eventually, we too a regular car-type taxi to the pier the Sumida cruises left from.  The farthest north they went was close to Asakusa, where we had visited a few days before.  We bought tickets for that destination and boarded.  

As I mentioned before, it was election time while we were there.  Here are just some of the candidates that were running.

The water taxi pier we kept trying to find.  Eventually a woman from the neighborhood had to lead us there, around to the back of her building, then down a path, then some stairs leading to the pier.  There was no one around to book a ride up the rivers, so we ended up hailing a regular ground taxi. 

A radio tower I thought might be Tokyo Tower at first, then realized we were too far away for that to be true.   

This was crazy.  While riding in the taxi to the pier to board the Sumida River cruise, we passed some Mario Brother go-karts.  These are people that pay money to dress up like the characters in the Mario Brother video games and drive around the city in these bright red go-karts.  We’ve seen them in Akihabara, Osaka, and in Asakusa.  But this is on the FREEWAY.  It’s a weird blindspot in the usually safety conscious Japanese mindset.

A close-up of the go-karts from earlier in the trip.  Would you take one of these on to the freeway?  Not in Los Angeles, I wouldn’t.

The cruise was fun.  Tokyo is a picturesque city, with lots of interesting buildings to see.  The most unique site visible from the Sumida river is the headquarters of the Asahi Beer company.  It’s the one with the strange gold drop shaped sculpture on top.  It’s been referred to as the “golden turd” online, and there is speculation that the company officers approved the design after a meeting where they drank too much of their product.  The building next to it is the headquarters of an independent brewer’s association.  It’s been pointed out that the association’s building resembles a tall glass filled with beer.  

Boarding the Tokyo Cruise ship. 

The cruise ships were designed by Matsumoto Leiji, the artist behind the classic anime Galaxy Express 999.

Inside the Tokyo Cruise ship.  Very spacious.

Another interior shot.  The stairs to the bar on this side of the ship were roped off.  But the ones on the other side were open.

The Fuji TV building, which sits behind the pier where you board the cruise ship.  Sort of looks like it might be a spaceport. 

My Tokyo Cruise ginger ale.

An expressway bridge. 

The cruise takes you through the heart of Tokyo.

Cruise ship waiting for its passengers headed out to sea. 

A Japanese research vessel.

There are several rivers cutting through Tokyo that connect to the Sumida.  And dozens of bridges crossing them.

The headquarters for the Asahi Brewing Company to the right.  The building to the left that looks like a glass filled with beer is the headquarters of an association of independent beer brewers.

We had lunch at a small donburi restaurant, one of those where you buy a meal ticket from a machine to place your order.  After eating, we headed south.

I ordered Oyako Don, chicken and egg over rice.  The name means, “mother and child,” with the chicken being the mother and the egg the child.  

I found signs like this in several older buildings.  It may seem silly, but once you remember or realize that the original Japanese toilet was a porcelain version of a slit-trench, something you squatted over and didn’t sit on, it makes more sense.  This one was in a somewhat newer building, which makes me think it’s for visitors from other countries where the slit style toilet is still in use.  The larger characters look like they’re written in Chinese.

We found a park, Sumida Park, if I can figure my directions correctly.  The park is split in half by the river with the same name.  Japanese parks are quiet, tranquil places made to sit and relax and let your thoughts go.  Ponds are a common feature.  This was a pretty park with some sakura still in bloom.   

A small impromptu memorial on a bridge we crossed to get to the park.

A statue of someone important.  From the way he’s dressed, I’d guess he’s someone from the Meiji era, the time when Japan started to modernize.  I’m still trying to make out the characters of his name.

He’s pointing the way he thinks we ought to go.  But I’d just come from that direction, so I went the opposite way.

Tokyo Skytree from Sumida Park.

The sakura, cherry blossoms, were still blooming in the park.

Every Japanese park has a pond in it.  It’s part of the Shinto aesthetic.

Lots of green growing things to walk amongst.

A clearer view of the pond.

The pond from the opposite side.

Another view of the pond.

I can’t make out what is engraved on the stone.  The second character looks like, “island.”

There was a small temple being renovated next to the park.  We took a walk through it after giving them a few coins to help pay for the upkeep.

The tori gate leading from the park to the shrine.

The shrine was going through some sort of renovation, but was still open to the public.  I found a shrine maiden sitting behind the scaffolding at the window where you could buy charms.  Don’t know how many people go up the steps despite the foreboding appearance.

I found out that the Japanese name for these guardian lion-dogs is “komainu” (狛犬 - こまいぬ). “Shisa,” the word I used before, is the Okinawan name for them.  The one on the right will have its mouth open.  It is supposed to be saying the first letter of the Sanskrit alphabet,“a,” and has the job of keeping evil spirits out.  

The one on the left normally has its mouth closed, as it says the Sanskrit letter,“um.”  Together, the komainu are saying, “aum,” the word used in meditation which is supposed to mean “from the beginning to the end.”  The job of the closed-mouth komainu is to keep good spirits in.

Red tori gates leading to a smaller shrine.

There were a couple of statues depicting cattle in recline.  I wonder if this temple, in days gone by, housed a kami concerned with the protection of cattle.

A standing stone I’ll probably never be able to translate.

The other statue.  This one looks more bull-like than the first.

The plate on the bull statue’s base.

We headed back to the hotel after that.  We ran into more signs of the upcoming election.  "Election cars," which drive around the streets while someone inside extols their candidate to the passers-by.  I provide a sample of what they sound like below.

An “election car.”  You hear them everywhere as you walk through Tokyo before an election.

We had dinner at the hotel cafe.  I ordered the “Five Cheese Pizza” from the cafe’s menu.  What I got was a circle of bread, a bit thick and chewy, with a mixture of five different cheeses on top.  No tomato sauce.  It wasn’t too bad, taste wise, but it did confirm for me, again, that Japanese pizza isn’t for me.  

The only think left for us to do was to pack and get to the airport the next day.