I Sat Across from a Pretty Girl on the Subway

Well today I woke up astonishingly late- 9:30- because I made myself go back to sleep after I woke up at 6. That means I spent over 12 hours unconscious. I have felt more awake and together today than yesterday, I didn't feel like I could lie down and sleep for a million years at 11am today, an obvious improvement. I was greeted with an onion and something filled onigiri and a canned cafe au lait, since Alex had taken the trouble to get me an onigiri I felt obligated to eat it despite its filling. The first order of business was to spend two hours in transit to Shinjuku and then Hanazono-jinja, a shinto shrine, where there was also a fleamarket every Sunday. This was quite an ordeal because the station I had carefully planned to get off at was not the one we reach, not quite sure if this happened because I wasn't paying attention or if that stop was not reachable by that particular train- we used the stop later to go home.
I did eventually manage to figure out which street we were on and which direction we needed to head in, I love the frequently posted area maps. This set of shrines, there was a big one, a small one and a few extra fancy-looking buildings, cut a right angle path through the middle of busy city block in Shinjuku.
This was the smaller shrine seemingly dedicated to the foxes. There were some very nice statues on either side of the inner shrine with an adult fox and kit. I took pictures but of course I am unable to upload them, so I shall persist in using Alex's until I resolve this issue and back-fill my photos.
The flea market was actually a very small affair with perhaps ten vendors, all of them older people content to sit back and let people look. There was one couple that had an amazing selection of kimonos, yukatas, haoris, obis, and even a pair of long hakama. There were many exquisite colors and patterns but I had to remind myself that I had to be able to carry anything I bought with me, or else I would have gotten several very beautiful things that would have cost $30 or less. I have no idea why some that seemed top quality to me, like a black kimono embroidered all around the bottom with a multicolored pheasant and decorations, were put in a large sale pile. However, I did get a bunny yukata that is extra cute and a black men's haori as a gift. The only other things that stood out to me was an interesting album filled with old pictures of kabuki actors, the cover was velvet and the pictures were all silvery so that they looked like they had a layer of metal. There would be a page with the person in their normal dress and then one with them in costume, sometimes a scene and then two people in it on the next facing pages. They all looked so somber and melancholy, but elegant. I bet they were taken prior to the '50s just because of the way their regular clothes looked. Another thing I that struck me was a tsuba, the guard on a katana, that had a scene with a lone wolf on one side and then a skull on the other. I found it very appropriate.
The temple was closed, as were all of the other temples we stumbled across today, but I still made an offering and rung the big bell. There were many wooden plaques off to one side with people's wishes written on them. This is an example of one from the temple in Shinjuku-Chuo-koen. Cute yes?
We found our way to this one after we went to look at the Tokyo Metropolitan Adminstration Building which was very large and shiny. I will post a picture of it later, but in the courtyard in front of it there were many bronze statues, almost all of them of women, in a semi-circle facing a fountain that was not on. There was no explanation posted for them, but this one reminded me of Idunn and her golden apples.

Then we toddled off to the Shinjuki-Chou-koen where there were great big crows (ravens?) some nice plant-life and what seemed to me to be Homeless Town Tokyo, not a block from the Metropolitan Buildings. It is always very unnerving to see poverty directly adjacent to well-groomed affluence. Tokyo is applying to be the Olympic host for 2016, and will be according to the banners hung from their shiny, new, official buildings.
The hunger set in at the park and so we had a Sri Lankan lunch at "Court Lodge" near the Shinjuku station- my set lunch came with savory rice that had green peas, raisins, and cashews in it. Desert was chai and mango pudding:
Afterwards I convinced Alex to venture into Isetan- it is in my mind the most fabulous of all depa-to. On the way there we came across a set-up for 3 bands outside a movie theater and saw one of them play. Minx Zone had two girls and a guy and their music was quite delightful, I will buy one of their Cds if I ever find one. I have a picture of them on my camera. In Isetan I took a sneaky photo of the food floor this time, i think it turned out alright but i'm not sure since i can't upload it. everything i said about Matsuzakaya goes thrice over for Isetan. It was more beautiful and more fabulous and bigger and had more interesting stuff. There were amazing sparkly tights that i thought seriously about purchasing until I remembered the usual size issue. In the jewelry department the stuff I was most taken by was actually the least expensive, but still exorbitantly pricey. It mostly resembled costume jewelry with lots of sparkles and flowers and leaves in blues, greens, and purples.
We returned to the hostel early again because it is very fatiguing to walk around all day in the heat and humidity. There I met the other UNM student for Akita- Katrina- who is actually from Florida but has been at UNM for a year now.

This blog was finished a day later because my laptop died while writing it last night. Everyone went to sleep slightly before it died so I was forced to retreat to the lounge to read. I didn't actually manage to fall asleep until around one and was awoken, much to my dismay, at around 5am when 2 girls in my dorm got up and started a process of moving around that lasted for around an hour and a half. - skip to next entry